How to support your athlete’s mental health

<p>SHOW NOTES:</p> <p>Weight in Gold HBO sports documentary</p> <p align="left">It delves into the debilitating depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations, and other mental health crises that can plague these athletes on their quests for gold, regardless of their level of acclaim</p> <p>Intense training, hours, singular focus to the exclusion of other things like friendships, family time & vacations; fear of taking even 1 day off</p> <p>I’m aware of benefits of kids playing youth sports: teamwork, learning a skill, exercise for your body, win & lose, sportsmanship, see body for its function vs just appearance, make friends with similar interest, creates a tribe</p> <p><strong>Overuse injuries have been rising</strong>: Sports specialization and not following the youth sport participation recommendations may increase the chance of overuse injuries; Female athletes more frequently specialize in a sport at earlier ages and sustain more injuries than males</p> <p>Whole life structured around their sport; when quit b/c of injury or graduate HS, not know how to structure their days on their own</p> <p>Must grieve this as a loss, a process, take time to journal what they learned about self, gained, life lessons they want to take with them, things they want to leave behind</p> <p>Knew their place by their ranking, their numbers and times, accolades from coaches and parents, <strong>now not sure how they are doing</strong>, sense of confidence and standing must come from within</p> <p>Do things for YOUR reasons, what do you want and WHY?</p> <p><strong>Body image</strong>: see selves as fat when really muscular; compare their muscular legs to toothpick friends; distorted body image</p> <p>Stress from parents and coaches and recruiters and college prospects: MS & HS girls want to quit b/c they are burned out but afraid of disappointing parents, coaches, teammates</p> <p><strong>Value achievement over character</strong>; adds pressure<strong>, anxiety</strong> about measuring up and winning and pleasing adults, <strong>depress