Athletes need help ‘just like us’
“Athletes can experience the same feelings of stigma around mental health issues as everyone else, which they may feel more acutely being in the public eye." Image: courtneyk/iStockphoto When it comes to dealing with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, elite athletes are ‘just like us’, and ‘just like us’ they need help, research from The Australian National University reveals.Amelia Gulliver, a PhD candidate at the Centre for Mental Health Research, in the ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, recruited young elite athletes in a collaborative project with the Australian Institute of Sport to study the effectiveness of three online interventions aimed at increasing knowledge about mental disorders and reducing stigma.She found that the more information the athletes had, the more likely they were to seek help.“The first online intervention was very basic and minimal. It had a list of people that the athletes could contact if they were...