7 Ways Communities and Systems Can Support Mental Wellness for Student-Athletes

 

Youth sport has many stakeholders, ranging from the athletes themselves to their caregivers, coaches, sports organizers, and communities. While all those roles come with their own challenges, the role of schools or communities in helping to develop healthy youth sports can be especially complex.

A recent recommendations report from TrueSport detailed the ways different stakeholders can best serve young athletes in terms of mental wellness and included recommendations for those systems and communities. Here, one of the authors of the report—widely recognized sports sociologist Jay Coakley, PhD,—and Jennifer Royer, PhD, Senior Director of TrueSport and Awareness at USADA, share the tangible ways communities* and systems can best support mental wellness for student-athletes.

1. Understand The Impact an Organization Can Have

“We have to have a healthy system in order to have healthy athletes,” explains Royer. “We need the tools to teach athletes resiliency, self-confidence, and self-advocacy. If we don't have that in place at the systemic level, it’s really difficult to successfully support athletes."

“I think it’s important to focus on restructuring youth sports, rather than dealing with individual issues here and there,” adds Coakley. While a coach may have a direct impact on their athletes, we will see more lasting and durable change from the community and larger systems.

2. Understand Your Responsibility as an Organization

As the report lays out, individuals like coaches, families, and athletic trainers can actively support young athletes, but organizations are tasked with making broader changes at the policy level and then executing and enforcing those policies. Mental wellness as a complement to physical well-being for athletes must be the highest prioritization for any organization working with or supporting young athletes. Seeing each individual athlete as a human being who needs to be addressed in the broader context of their humanity rather than solely for their prowess on the playing field must be the starting point for any stakeholder in youth sports.

3. Understand The Pressures That Student-Athletes Face

“We have to recognize that this group of young people is not experiencing life, culture, sport, school, or work the same way as past generations,” says Royer. “Everything is different, including the fact that they live in an entirely global society that is more transparent because of social media. We have to advocate for athletes differently because they are living in a different world now. And sport has to be different going forward, or it stands to lose the participation of all these young people.”