Athletes’ 4 most common mental health concerns

Recently I’ve been working with some D1 athletes as clients, so I’m pretty interested in the NCAA’s latest Student-Athlete Health and Wellness Study.

The NCAA has been increasing its efforts to address mental health challenges and the pressures on student-athletes. This is an incredibly complex challenge, but I believe it’s an important one to tackle. I’ve spent most of my career teaching psychology-related courses to college students -especially my favorite class on the Biopsychology of Stress- and I know from a lot of experience how important these topics are to all college students, and especially to high achievers like athletes

So what are the most common mental health concerns for athletes surveyed in the study?

• Insomnia

• Mental exhaustion

• Anxiety

• Feeling overwhelmed

Read those through slowly and really let yourself feel them. Those are hard things. And very real for all of us. I hear these as top concerns when I do executive leadership workshops.

These are very real mental health concerns. and yet we tend to be reluctant to reach out for help. Mental health support seems like it is supposed to be just for those with diagnosable disorders or crises. What if we’re not necessarily disordered, but just don’t know how to deal with the mental burdens that we are carrying? Do we have to just struggle until it becomes a huge problem and we collapse, burnout, or breakdown? Is there a way to deal with these in a proactive way?

This is exactly the niche I try to fill. We can be proactive and support our mental health concerns without reaching the level of a clinical problem. In fact, those resources should be more readily available.

This list of concerns resonates so deeply with me, having spent 20 years with college students- and with the professors and parents who interact with them. We forget how young and inexperienced that 18-22 year-olds are. We expect them to manage their time and self in adult ways, when they’ve never had real training to do so. We tend to expect a lot from these people, and we dismiss their lived experience and what’s important and valuable to them. It seems reasonable to tell them to “get more sleep” or “get organized” or “just relax” but too often we say those things without spending time digging into all the very real obstructions they have to accomplishing those tasks.

What many college students, particularly athletes, need help with is the HOW TO part of that. HOW do I get more sleep when all these things are in the way? HOW do I manage the many things that are being asked of me? and so on.

In my workshops (and my new online course! Beta testing is wrapping up, look for the link soon!!), I focus on meeting the expectations of an adult with the experience of a teenager.

The good news from the study presented in January 2024 is that fewer athletes reporting feeling overwhelmed, mentally exhausted or lonely than at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, as detailed this article: Student Athletes’ Mental Health Has Improved, but Not for All. Perhaps not surprising, mental health concerns aren’t felt equally by all. Female athletes, athletes of color, and LGBTQ+ athletes still report disproportionately high rates of struggling with their mental health. Vulnerable populations are likely going to need additional support. This is an important topic to come back to, so stay tuned to future blog posts.