Student Athlete Mental Health: Building Resilience and Trust & Being Supportive

Available with English captions and subtitles in Spanish.

A conversation with Abigail Stark, PhD, on how we can help young athletes train their mental health muscles. Cali Werner, LCSW, also shares her own experiences as a young person with OCD and an elite athlete.

Strengthening Minds and Bodies

When it comes to addressing the mental health challenges facing student athletes, resilience is key. Stark explains how young athletes can develop skills they need to manage the pressures put on them, and how educators, coaches, and parents can support these athletes through trusting relationships.

Werner, a clinician and researcher, shares personal insights on what it’s like to compete in high school and college sports while experiencing a mental health condition. She also talks about how her past experiences inform her current career.

Watch now to learn more about:

  • Why resilience is important for student athletes
  • How young athletes can develop resilience
  • How parents and coaches can help student athletes

Resilience is defined as a person’s ability to bounce back from setbacks, recover from adversity, and persevere through challenges. Student athletes face additional pressures that can get in the way of resilience.

In the case of student athletes, identity can become wrapped around being good at their sport, and receiving positive reinforcement for their ability. Stark points out that resilience is needed, especially when there’s a blow to this identity.

“Let’s say you get injured. Let’s say that there’s another really good player that comes in and you’re benched?” Stark says. “All of these different setbacks require resilience and figuring out, ‘How do I bounce back?’ ‘How do I continue having my own identity and purpose?’”

Reflecting back on her own experiences as a student athlete, Werner says the majority of her resilience has come from navigating difficult times.

“Those are the moments that, looking back, I can say, ‘Wow, I went through that, so I can definitely do fill-in-the-blank challenge that happens,” Werner shares.

Stark explains how resilience involves a growth mindset: the ability to see challenges as an opportunity for growth and to emphasize effort over final outcomes. Self-awareness and cognitive flexibility (the ability to see a situation from different perspectives) are important components of this outlook.

The good news is that resilience can be fostered. The building blocks of resilience are the same as those for mental wellness. Adequate sleep and nutrition help athletes regulate emotions. In addition, athletes can use coping strategies, especially mindfulness.

Stark points out that this skill of really slowing things down and noticing “is actually a different muscle to hone, emotionally, than athletes may be used to using.” However, being able to be mindful of the present moment and notice their own emotions is an important skill athletes can learn to cope with different challenges that come up.

Stark adds that the environments we live in can help us become more resilient individuals. One of the challenges of fostering resilience in student athletes, however, is that it can be hard to let the process unfold.

“In order to learn resilience, we have to deal with adversity and learn how to bounce back. I think this is one of the challenges—as a parent, coach, educator, and therapist—that we do have to let student athletes learn to manage setbacks and sit with that discomfort from our end.”

Werner emphasizes that young athletes need to take some risks in order to learn, and parents can help by taking a step back. “They can understand that, yes, your athlete is going to struggle, but especially in those years when our brains are still developing, if we take that risk away from the athlete, how are they going to learn at all?”

According to Stark, when parents, coaches, and high-profile athletes can model resilience for young athletes, “it is huge and normalizing.”

“I think of Simone Biles as someone who knows when to step back, show resilience, and share what they’re going through.”

“When we’re thinking of the long term, being able to act like we’re robots who don’t feel any of these emotions and just push and push and push, it doesn’t work; it’s just not sustainable. We all feel these emotions, even at the elite level.”

Audience Questions

  • What should we know about the meaning and mechanics of resilience?
  • Some people might believe that resilience is something we’re either born with or we’re not. To what degree can we learn to build our own resilience?
  • Can you give us some examples of how a young adult might need to build resilience while navigating life challenges? What about a student athlete?
  • What should we know about flexibility? How does it fit into our conversation today?
  • To what degree is self-awareness key in building resilience?
  • Can you talk a bit about how sports psychology, as you understand it, might incorporate resilience-building?
  • What are some specific coping strategies that an athlete might use to navigate mental health challenges that come up?
  • How do fundamental aspects of emotional and mental well-being such as sleep and nutrition factor into the building of resilience?
  • How can athletes know when resilience-building calls for outside help?
  • Can you speak to the importance of building trust in relationships?
  • How might a parent, coach, trainer, or educator go about building the trust of student athletes in their care?
  • How can stigma get in the way of a student athlete seeking help for mental health challenges? Any suggestions for addressing that?
  • What do you make of the role that elite athletes are playing these days in talking openly about their own struggles with mental health?
  • What are your thoughts on having college students speak at their former high schools about their experiences, what they have learned, and what they wish they’d known while in high school?
  • Can you speak to the importance of a coach knowing their athletes as individuals?
  • What are some tools that a clinician might use to build trust with a patient? Are there any specific ways to connect with a student athlete?
  • How can different figures in a student athlete’s life play a role in their support system? What might those roles look like?
  • Oftentimes, a student athlete might resist getting help from someone when facing a mental health challenge. Any suggestions for those attempting to provide that help?
  • You’ve talked about the importance of validation. Can you offer any examples of validating language an adult might use with a student athlete? Any tips for starting a difficult conversation with a young person?
  • How can differences between cultures or among different populations impact the overall concept of resilience?
  • How can student athletes learn to manage stressors in the moment, such as yelling from coaches, pressure from teammates, and chants from crowds?
  • Does facing anxiety in the moment require training? If so, what does that process look like?
  • What are your thoughts on the pressures that social media puts on young people, especially student athletes?
  • How can clinicians best help high-achieving young athletes and their parents balance childhood and sports pursuits?
  • Do you have any suggestions for starting a school year in the right way as a coach?
  • Can you speak about the need for resilience-building for trainers, coaches, and others who work with student athletes?
  • How old were you when you first got involved with athletics?
  • Do you remember feeling pressures around your athletic pursuits as a kid?
  • Can you give us an example or two of what your OCD challenges looked like in high school?
  • How did your parents and early coaches process the “quirky” compulsions they might have been seeing with you?
  • At what point did these OCD challenges start impacting your performance and mental health?
  • By college, you were competing at a very high level. Can you talk about the additional challenges that brought?
  • When were you diagnosed with OCD? How did that come about?
  • What was your first reaction to the diagnosis? Was it comforting to know that there was a name for it? Did it create additional anxiety because of the stigma around it?
  • When you look back, how would you characterize the level of understanding between your clinical support team and your training support team? Was there a mutual understanding of the challenges involved?
  • Did your personal experience inform your decision to become a clinician?
  • Your story involves a diagnosable mental health condition, but not all student athlete mental health concerns do. Can you talk about that distinction?
  • What should we know about resilience as it pertains to student athletes?
  • What does it take to build trust between athletes and training and coaching staff? How important is that trust?
  • Lately, there has been a great focus on stigma around mental illness, in general, and certainly for athletes, as well. Is the trend line moving in the right direction?
  • What are some of the challenges that parents face when supporting a student athlete?
  • What do you most want to share with other clinicians about supporting student athletes?
  • Do you find that most college campuses are equipped to address mental health challenges for student athletes?
  • When you look back on your journey, both as an athlete and as a clinician, what is the most important lesson that you have learned?
  • When student athletes receive constant feedback and are compared to other young people, how does that impact their mental health?
  • Can exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy be useful for some student athletes who struggle with perfectionism or rituals?
  • How can someone find a clinician who is trained in ERP?
  • How can adults help young people learn to push through barriers in a healthy way that supports growth?
  • Any suggestions for helping change a school’s culture from “win, win, win” to one that shows support for its student athletes even when they don’t win?
  • How can student athletes learn to navigate the range of emotions they might feel while competing?
  • How can one best support an athlete who is struggling with their self-worth being tied to their performance and how they are viewed by themselves and others?
  • How can educators and coaches avoid appearing like they are playing favorites when some student athletes require more attention than others?
  • When a student athlete chooses to step away from their sport for mental health reasons, how can a clinician help them focus on their wellness and not any potential pushback from others?
  • It can be difficult for athletes to accept and learn from the value of slow progress rather than immediate success. How can adults help young people see value in the process itself?
  • Do you have any suggestions for how to approach coaches when concerned about their coaching style or team culture?
  • How can coaches learn to best address the mental health needs of their student athletes?
  • How important is it for the various members of a student athlete’s support team to communicate with one another?
  • What are some of the key signs of mental health challenges that adults should be watching for in student athletes?
  • Can you suggest any resources for someone looking to address mental health challenges involving student athletes?
  • What would you most like to stress when it comes to the mental health of student athletes?

The information discussed is intended to be educational and should not be used as a substitute for guidance provided by your health care provider. Please consult with your treatment team before making any changes to your care plan.

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About Abigail Stark

Abigail Stark, PhD, is a staff psychologist at the McLean Anxiety Mastery Program as well as at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She is an instructor in psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Stark is interested in providing evidence-based care for children and adolescents with a focus on chronic emotion dysregulation, anxiety, and OCD.

About Cali Werner

Cali Werner, LCSW, is a clinician and researcher with expertise in OCD and related anxiety disorders and their impact on competitive athletes. She is also a highly successful distance runner and mental health advocate. As a Division I athlete at Rice University, Cali won nine conference championships and was named an honorable mention all-American in the 10K. She credits her own OCD diagnosis with leading her to a career of providing evidence-based care.

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