Of course, it’s safe to acknowledge feelings of anxiety and depression, even suicidal thoughts, in a survey. A survey is anonymous. Actually telling a coach or trainer about those feelings is another matter entirely. And even more unusual is the coach or trainer who knows precisely what to do.
Talking openly about debilitating thoughts and emotions might seem like a logical and necessary step for an athlete, until you consider that sports are built on the pillars of toughness and perseverance. Picture every Hollywood sports movie, ever. One thing they all have in common: a montage of the lead character pushing through the pain, training to become the best. Our culture celebrates harder, faster, stronger. Vulnerability, it would seem, undermines that pursuit. And within sports culture, continuing to practice or play, no matter what your mind or body says, is romanticized: T-shirts are emblazoned with quotes, inspirational sayings are stenciled on the locker room wall, epic speeches are given. At Colorado, a saying above one doorway read “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
Imagine, with that sign hanging over you, telling a coach you can’t run that day. Not because your body hurts (and what kind of hurt is bad enough?), but because your brain does. Many coaches believe these moments are forks in the road, and that choosing to push through pain—in whatever form that pain comes—is what creates champions. Athletes often believe this, too. And it’s not entirely wrong. Pushing through pain, clearing hurdles others have crashed into, is how an athlete improves. Knowing the difference between a hurdle and a brick wall is also crucial—yet recognizing that difference is almost impossible when you’re eighteen years old. That’s the coach’s job. And if a coach isn’t sensitive to brick walls, athletes are often left to engage in debilitating mental warfare: one part of the mind says no more; the other part tells them they’re weak for saying no more.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has recognized how much work must be done to address the mental and emotional well-being of student-athletes, and also admits that for too long, it’s been a vastly less significant priority than promoting their physical health. If the variance in spending weren’t so disconcerting, the difference would be laughable. Consider the state-of-the-art equipment, expansive weight rooms, training rooms, and practice fields at most Division I schools. If a football player pulls a hamstring, nearly half a dozen licensed professionals hover over him, discussing the most innovative ways to rehabilitate his strained muscle. Yet if most athletic departments’ commitment to mental and emotional health were visualized as a weight room, it would more closely resemble this: a few rusted dumbbells, a cracked mirror, cobwebs, and plenty of open space waiting to be filled.
These are the conditions in which many student-athletes train and play. Getting better in such circumstances is almost completely up to the individual.
In 2014, the NCAA deemed the issue of mental health so pressing that it commissioned a paper on the topic that included stories from former athletes, data, and best practices. “In sports like football, toughness is celebrated and weakness is despised,” writes former National Football League lineman Aaron Taylor in this paper. “We do what’s necessary to navigate this ‘manly’ environment, and that means masking our feelings. Players learn to ‘suck it up,’ ‘rub some dirt on it’ and ‘gut it out,’ usually with positive results. We’re so conditioned to do this that we often default to such behavior in our everyday lives. Unfortunately, masking emotional issues doesn’t work as well in the game of life as it does helping us play through a high ankle sprain. It also helps explain why so many emotional and mental health problems go unnoticed. Players become masters at keeping their game faces on all the time, often until it’s too late.”
According to the NCAA, suicide ranks as the third most frequent cause of death among student-athletes—behind accidents and cardiac failure. Colleges and universities do have policies and procedures in place to respond to a student-athlete’s mental health issues. The concern is that the quality of the response, and the intrinsic understanding of the issues, is often subpar, especially when compared to everything we know and study, and discuss at length, about an athlete’s body.
Athletic departments more often than not have numerous staff members fully certified to treat physical injuries, yet most don’t have a single licensed mental health professional on the full-time payroll. For some departments, this isn’t a conscious omission; they’ve simply never considered the necessity. For others, it’s about cost, about where their money will have the most impact. And quantifying the productivity of a training staff—in ankles taped and injuries rehabbed—is much easier than gauging that of a mental health professional.
According to a 2014 article on ESPN, fewer than twenty-five Division I athletic departments employed a psychologist on staff. The importance of a psychologist is this: she may be the only staff member whose job is not related to winning. Even the most compassionate coaches and trainers are dependent on the physical performance of their athletes. It’s a nice bonus if they graduate healthy human beings, but that’s not specifically why they’re drawing a paycheck.
The NCAA is playing catch-up, trying to patch the holes. “One in every four or five young adults has mental health issues,” Timothy Neal, assistant athletics director for sports medicine at Syracuse University, told ESPN. “But what is unique about the student-athlete is they have stressors and expectations of them unlike the other students that could either trigger a psychological concern or exacerbate an existing mental health issue.”