It is not uncommon for a coach to have had a lifelong interest or involvement in sport and physical activity, and so it might not be an unreasonable generalisation that our default thought settings fall somewhere under the umbrella of, bigger, faster, stronger. However, regardless of the depth of our knowledge, passion, and skill in these areas, they are perhaps only valid if they are received. In the first instance, the athlete has to show up to receive what we have to give, and we then need to ensure what we are giving is well and appropriately communicated. In his book, Sumpercommunicators, Charles Duhigg proffers that a person will approach us with one of three goals, they want to be helped, heard, or hugged. Mental health is a big part of current day conversation, but on the same theme as, Duhigg, Theodore Roosevelt observed, some 100+ years earlier, that nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care, and many hundreds of years before him, Lao Tzu, determined that, if you would take, you must first give. Athletes often don’t look the same as general population, outwardly presenting something closer to a superhero perhaps, but their susceptibility to mental disorders are broadly comparable (Rice et al., 2016), making them just as vulnerable to a range of mental health related challenges.
Discourse among those who work in sport is strongly encouraged, as is the united effort of researchers in developing strategies for assessment and support of athletes (Gouttebarge et al., 2021), (Cumming & Ranson, 2021), while elevating the status of mental health to that which it is considered a critical component in training organisations, programmes and environments (Henriksen et al., 2020), (Röthlin et al., 2023). While conversation and consideration are important, and though there are already tools to help assess an athletes well-being (Foster & Chow, 2019), it must be with the intent to take practical steps and measures towards actionable intervention (Van Slingerland et al., 2019). One practical intervention that already exists, is the sport itself, which through participation has the capacity to improve mental health status in an athlete (Eather et al., 2023), and in some instances athletes can report medium to high levels of perceived mental well-being (Kuettel et al., 2021), perhaps as a direct result of participation, however it would be prudent to note that mental health status is not fixed but dynamic (Nelson et al., 2017), and the off-field experience of an athlete may not align with their on-field experience.
Having support in place could be of great value, but we must work, together, to help foster a culture of acceptability across the athletic community, in respect to accessing mental health support, which is still seen by many athletes as being attached to a perceived stigma (Andersson et al., 2025), and maybe young men and boys in particular (Drummond et al., 2022), in order to remove any barriers that may exist between the athlete and the help they need. And stigma is not the only barrier, as athletes report concerns around confidentiality, and the impact on their very selection to compete (Pilkington et al., n.d.), which makes the pointed case for education and understanding to be engaged by all who work in sport, and not just the athletes themselves.
An athletes mental health status can be a predictor to injury susceptibility, but could also be significantly impacted by injury, and play a role in the process and success of their recovery (Gil-Caselles et al., 2024). Bringing this back to the role of the coach, their relationship with the athlete will often be the most intimate, and subsequently impactful. By employing a range of strategies to promote effective communication, a coach can develop a unique and deep bond with the athlete, built on trust and a sense of shared experience, which can also be extended to the training space itself (K. Hansson et al., 2021). This notion of the training space being viewed by the athlete as a safe space, can on its own have a positive impact on both individual and community mental health (Marshall & Martindale, 2024), however, in some instances, where possible, a dedicated safe space, or safe spaces, offered in addition to the training environment, could play a critical role in the support of mental well-being (Jones et al., 2021). The idea of creating a safe space might overwhelm the coach, however it might be that they are uniquely placed to cultivate a space that best meets their athletes and community’s needs, as their involvement and understanding of the area and the cultures of both the sport and the athletes, ensures warmth and authenticity (Spaaij & Schulenkorf, 2014).
The mental health charity, Mind, report that much has changed over the past 10 years, for the good, and as a result of screening, communication, collaboration, and high profile athletes speaking out, so though a big topic and challenging task, we are already making a difference, and for the most part, as a direct result of just talking. There is a clear cross-over between mental health in general population and in athletic populations, however, if we see our primary role as enabling the athlete every affordance so that they may win, it ought be noted that we increase their likelihood of success by supporting them in realising their full psychological potential (Durand-Bush et al., 2023). The helped, heard, or hugged model, offered by Duhigg, might also be seen through the lens of Maslow’s Rectified Hierarchy of Needs (Koltko-Rivera, 2006), and this may enable to coach a defined framework from which to make dynamic evaluation and choices to best support the athlete in that moment. Perhaps an athlete, in this context, ordinarily fixated on Esteem needs, might have experienced a change in personal circumstances that mean for a time they instead need to rediscover a sense of Belonging. Identifying this could allow the coach to profoundly modify the nature of a training session, which in turn could fill the gap that exists in that athlete in that moment.
Though we might be in a position to support the attainment and bolstering of mental health, through the provision and promotion of accessibility, acceptance, dynamic coaching, and fostering of supportive environments and other mechanisms, and build these around both hedonic (enjoyment) and eudaimonia (deep meaning) (Park & Ahn, 2022) outcomes, we must recognise the difference between mental health and mental illness. Even in health care settings, it has been observed that staff may hold negative attitudes and beliefs about people with mental illness (L. Hansson et al., 2013), and perhaps the conflation of health and illness plays a role in the stigma around both. We all have mental health, mental health that will fluctuate just as our physical health will, for our entire lives. And we can certainly influence the mental health of both ourselves and others, but those with mental illness will require a level of medical support and intervention that we should see as beyond our scope of practice, however, without doing all we can to provide all that we can for a person’s mental health.
May we stay curious, appropriately sceptical, and open to different.
Coach.
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