Student-athletes are trained to perform well and expected to excel in the classroom. These pressures can lead to increased levels of stress, anxiety, and other mental health issues in collegiate athletes. Ivanna Anderson, a 22-year-old water polo player from La Paz, Mexico started competing in 2013 under Coach Milagros Gallagos, Coach Milagros invited her to be in a competitive sport and Anderson said “I tried out one day and it was kind of fun and I had nothing to lose so I just stuck with it and here I am.” 

​

Anderson attended Cal State East Bay, an NCAA Division II program. In 2018, her first semester at East Bay, Anderson says, “I just became really depressed and felt like I was losing grip of everything, academics, water polo, and I lost touch with all the people I actually love. I felt so alone, but realizing that it was affecting my water polo career so much showed me that I have to speak up.” 

Mental health is something that cannot always be controlled. It could take months if not years to accept the illness and get help. It could also take months if not years for a change to happen and start enjoying life again.  

​

“There have been ups and downs, especially after I started college, I realized that I took a big hit on my mental health. I learned about how much it affects humans not only student-athletes. Many times, I would just think of myself ‘I am just an athlete, so I am not really a human;’ it takes a long time to realize that mental health affects your whole life,” said Anderson.  Many student-athletes struggle with their mental health to a degree because life is hard, but mental illness is when that struggle inhibits you from your daily life. 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Anderson explained what a normal week schedule in her life was like in college without competition and traveling. Anderson said, “when I was in college Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would wake up at 4:00 a.m. to go to morning practice, practice was from 4:30 to 9:30 a.m., then I would have three morning classes so I could have the afternoon open to work. Monday, Wednesday, Fridays I would have afternoon practices and I would normally take early 7:00 a.m. classes so I would have from 1:30 to 4:30 free for practice. Then normally I would go to work all the way to midnight. Then I would go home at 12:30 a.m. and go to sleep.” This also excludes weekend practices, workouts, and meetings. 

​

For many students, including Anderson, the freshman year of college has many unexpected changes. Freshman year of college is like walking through an obstacle course wearing a blindfold. For athletes, no context exists for how hard the workouts will be, how long they will last, what each class will be like, what events are fun, what should be avoided. There is no understanding that one task might feel exhausting, unmanageable, but hang on, because the following could possibly be light and easy. “For some who struggle with the unknown, freshman year of college can feel like walking a path lined with land mines – heart racing, disaster around every corner. Now add another variable: mental health,” Kate Fagan notes, in her 2018 work, “What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen".  

 

It is difficult to understand the stigma if you are not the one experiencing it. Anderson explained that she has not heard much, if any mental health awareness from her athletic department.  

​

“Coaches many times see us as robots, as their business. They are running a business through us. If you can do your job without them worrying about your mental health, then your good. If you are declining mentally and you are still doing your job, they won’t even ask you. I think the stereotype [in athletics] is that mental health is not a thing in student-athletes mainly in college when you have technically two jobs being a full-time student and trying to be the best at your sport,” said Anderson.  

​

“I was embarrassed about having to see someone. I told no one I was doing this. I felt weak. The saving grace was that I was spared the discomfort – unfortunately, that’s how it would have felt to me then – of walking across campus into the building that housed counseling services. Everything I did, except for attending classes, was within the silo of the athletic department: lift, practice, study, train, eat – even worship. This was my safe space, my comfort zone. And guess what? There was no counseling center, no psychologist’s office, within the athletic department building. The clear message: needing a psychologist is abnormal. How could an athlete with a mental health issue not feel like an outsider when she was literally forced out of the athletic department and pointed toward a building far away from campus and the athletic bubble?,” wrote Kate Fagan, in her book, “What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen". 

​

Resources for student-athletes are not there. Athletic departments more often than not have numerous staff members fully certified to treat physical injuries, yet most don’t have a single licensed mental health professional on the full-time payroll.  

​

“You would want to think that they have, I don’t want to say special treatment but something that will fit student-athletes schedules. Someone that understands a bit more of an athlete's life. I understand that counseling from student services is good, and they try to help you as a student. There is also that athlete part where there is a special connection. It is not when the athletic [or health] department wants to, it has to be when the student-athletes needs it. Maybe they get off of work at 12 or 3 a.m., yeah it sucks but their mental health is declining at that time. They are not gonna wait until 9:30 because wake up at 7:00 so they can go talk to you. When you are giving them a period of 7 hours and a half to help their mental health,” said Anderson.

 

“I see student-athletes as very depressed people – yeah they feel fulfilled and the adrenaline of the sport but when that is in pause like off-season or vacation, it is really hard to keep going and see any motivation,” said Anderson. “I saw a lot of other people suffering, not only just myself. I don’t want anyone suffering. I want to think of them in my shoes, not really me in theirs, but I never want them to feel like I did.” 

​

“I began to dread practice. This is not an exaggeration; I once swallowed an entire bottle of iron pills in the hopes that I would become violently ill so I could be excused from that afternoon’s session. Apparently, I believed that spending hours hunched over a toilet was more pleasant than being on the court. Every single day was the equivalent of me holding a thermometer next to a lightbulb, desperately trying to convince someone, anyone, not to make me go. I found myself focusing on whatever small aches and pains I had. A bruise on my shin was likely shin splints, a sore knee tendinitis. And if I complained persuasively enough, perhaps our trainer would tell me I needed to take a few days off. The hours before practice became a mental battle far more torturous than whatever I was hoping to avoid on the court. Anxiety dimmed my every waking moment,” wrote Kate Fagan. 

​

Anderson expressed many details about the added stressors and demands in the student-athlete life. To add to this stress, classes are supposed to be prioritized at universities, but a significant percentage of coaches do not seem to support this philosophy, as they make practices mandatory no matter how many exams an athlete has that day. All coaches emphasize being a ‘Student’ first then an athlete, but when a class time conflicts with practice, coaches frequently instruct athletes to take a different course or take it during the summer term instead of skipping practice to attend a class. Even the most compassionate coaches and trainers are dependent on the physical performance of their athletes. Additionally, the combination of the academics and athletics leaves little time for a part time job, a social life, Greek life, clubs, and other aspects of a “normal” college experience. 

​

In 2014, the NCAA deemed the issue of mental health so pressing that it commissioned a paper on the topic that included stories from former athletes, data, and the best practices. “In sports like football, toughness is celebrated and weakness is despised,” writes former Notre Dame’s All-American offensive lineman, Aaron Taylor in a 2014 story on ncaa.org. “We do what’s necessary to navigate this ‘manly’ environment, and that means masking our feeling. Players learn to ‘suck it up,’ ‘rub some dirt on it’ and ‘gut it out,’ usually with positive results,” Taylor wrote.  

​

Student-athletes have been molded to compete. Competing comes with comparison. Comparison comes with standards. Standards become unrealistic. Anderson said, “[Being an athlete has] made me a person that is definitely very disciplined, that likes structure. A little bit open minded because you have to be with a lot of people and a lot of coaches and know how to work with other teammates. You definitely are more diverse. But also, cons, I can sometimes be stubborn because if my routine doesn’t go as it should, I can get a little [annoyed] or it can affect my mental health. If I am not in that routine I can go downhill.” 

​

Athletes are so much more than the number on their back and the entertainment they provide. They are full-time students, full-time athletes. The NCAA is playing catch-up, trying to patch the holes. According to a 2014 article on ESPN, “fewer than twenty-five Division I athletic departments have a full-time licensed mental health practitioner on staff,” Nicole Noren wrote.

 

The importance of a psychologist is this: they may be the only staff member whose job is not related to winning. 

​