Mental Health in Sport Workshop

Inspiration

I got the inspiration during Dr Ian Sherwin's lecture on 'Coaching behaviours and their impact on athlete performance'. I am currently doing a Masters in Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology at University of Limerick and during the lecture I started thinking of the importance of a sports coach and the impact they have on their athletes and community in general. Coming from a background in coaching myself I never realised the importance of my role. During the lecture my mind was going 90 as I started to think how many people are in contact with coaches and should coaches be trained to recognise the signs of ill mental health and how to approach the subject then the potential impact that could have in reducing suicides is huge. Not only that but it also has the potential to decrease drop outs in sport and increase performance amongst athletes and teams.

What it does

The workshop will educate coaches and support staff how to recognise the signs or a change in mental health, how to approach the individual, who to refer them on to and how to support the individual through their journey.

How I built it

The workshop is built on a similar intervention which was carried out in Australia (Sebbens et al., 2016). It's a 4 hour workshop which can be delivered online (due to COVID19 restrictions) or in person. Using the Mental Health First Aid as a model, the workshop will be specific to sports coaches and support staff where they will be taught to recognise, reach out, refer and remain supportive through a series of presentations and applying this knowledge to sport specific videos, case studies and role-plays.

Challenges I ran into

The biggest challenge is having to move the live workshop to online and perhaps losing that connection/rapport building with coaches and the role plays which forms an essential part of this workshop. However having moved other live trainings to online during COVID19 and seeing how successful they have been, I am now confident the above will not be as big a challenge as originally thought.

Another challenge perhaps will be to get coaches and support staff on board to do this workshop as they may feel 'it's not their job' or perhaps may feel we are trying to get them to take on more responsibility rather than give them the tools to help them with what they're dealing with already.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm proud to be working on this idea with my thesis supervisor Dr Ian Sherwin as I get to combine my passion for sport and mental health on a project that I am passionate about and that I truly believe could change sport and the stigma of mental health in Ireland

What I learned

I learned the importance of a coach and the coach/athlete relationship and how valuable coaches are within an individual/athletes life and within their community. I learned athletes deal with more mental health problems than the general population and are too often afraid to speak about these issues as they fear it's a sign of weakness and perhaps will be dropped from their team.

What's next for Mental Health in Sport

I would love to get this workshop rolled out across Ireland. The dream would be to have every coach in Ireland (and beyond!) wanting to do this workshop willingly and for there to come a time that doing this workshop is as necessary as doing your coaching qualifications.