Insight: Mental Health & The Student Athlete

Mental Health In Sport

The life of an athlete is often glamorized. We see the shiny medals, praise the wins, and heap accolades onto the champions, but what many people don’t fully realize is the severe amount of pressure athletes are put under. From the grueling hours of training to the threat of injury to performance anxiety, there are many things in the life of an athlete spectators are not privy to.

This goes double for student-athletes. Not only do they have to deal with almost everything a professional adult athlete has to, they have to juggle schooling and other extra-curricular activities on top of that, both of which carry respective pressures of their own. And in a result driven society like Hong Kong, this can take quite the toll.

As a former Division 1 college athlete myself, I know all too well the struggles that student-athletes have to go through. Balancing school and sport and being successful at both is hard enough, but oftentimes with that also comes neglect of other priorities. Between 6am conditioning, class all day, treatments, film, practice, studying, weekends on eight hour bus trips where you need to somehow find a way to be productive and catch up on schoolwork, holiday “breaks” spent on the road, having to take exams early because they interfere with game days, many other essential priorities such as sleep and eating fall to the wayside, simply because you just don’t have the time. And this can easily result in not just physical, but also mental exhaustion.

In the US, there have been a rash of suicides amongst college athletes. Not just any either, but some of the best of us. These were champions in their respective sports. Phenomenal athletes and outstanding students. “Happy,” “Always smiling,” “Always helpful”. Gone. All before they even had the chance to graduate. It is easy to see them as their achievements, but at the end of the day, these champions are also just kids.

Mental health in student-athletes is a very real issue. The pressure that these kids feel is real, dangerous, and sadly far too often, fatal. But what can we do? It’s not that people don’t want to help, it’s that they often just don’t quite know how, or for that matter, even know that the issue exists. Because people don’t fake depression, but they will fake being okay. Because they don’t want to burden you and so they would rather keep their struggles to themselves. So it’s hard to tell a lot of the time.

We need to normalize talking about mental health. To get rid of the stigma. People struggling does not mean they are weak, it just means they’re going through something they’re struggling to handle. Sometimes all it takes is the right words, but sometimes, all it can take is the wrong ones. So be kind. You never know what someone else is going through. A common saying is that student-athletes are students first. But that’s wrong. They are more than their positions or their achievements. They are unequivocally, irrevocably, humans first.?