By John Affleck — 2019
Experts I spoke with for this story pointed to a couple of reasons professional athletes are particularly susceptible to mental health issues.
Read on theconversation.com
CLEAR ALL
Through the size of her platform, however, and her decision to choose well-being over pursuit of a Grand Slam title, Osaka offers the promise of bringing mental health awareness—both inside and outside of sports—to an entirely new level.
Setting high goals is great, but how you deal with falling short determines how long you’re willing to keep chasing them.
Michael Phelps, the most decorated athlete in Olympic history with 28 medals, has acknowledged that after the 2012 games, his longtime depression was so overwhelming he thought about killing himself.
It’s no surprise that when a person gets a diagnosis of heart disease, cancer or some other life-limiting or life-threatening physical ailment, they become anxious or depressed.
2
More athletes are reporting mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, psychiatric conditions and eating disorders.
Elite athletes are known for their exceptional physiology. Arguably, their superior strength, power, endurance and biomechanics all play a key role in enabling their success.
Elite athletes are more likely to rise to the occasion after a failure if they keep potential unhelpful consequences of striving for perfection in check, according to a University of Alberta study, the first of its kind to investigate perfectionism and performance following failure in competitive...
Adam Nicholls explains the upsides and downsides of perfectionism in sport, and how to manage perfectionism to maximise performance.
Perfectionists demand a lot from themselves about the quality of their performance. They have high expectations. This can lead to self-doubt when these athletes do not perform up to their high standards.
Demand from patients seeking help for their mental illnesses has led to underground use in a way that parallels black markets in the AIDS pandemic. This underground use has been most perilous for people of color, who face greater stigma and legal risks due to the War on Drugs.