Gryphon athletes helping lead the conversation
Bell Let’s Talk has teamed up with 53 Canadian universities to promote mental health awareness on campuses across the country.
The campaign partnered with the athletic departments at each university to decrease the stigma on campuses by having student athletes lead the conversation.
Bell Let’s Talk is a mental health awareness campaign that began in 2010 and uses social media to reach a huge audience. The campaign donates five cents to mental health initiatives for every text, call, Tweet, Facebook post, Instagram, or Snapchat on Bell Let’s Talk Day.
This year, in the lead up to Bell Let’s Talk Day on Jan. 25, student athletes across the country are embracing the movement and talking openly about mental health. The campaign created a series of videos featuring athletes from universities from the Atlantic University Sport (AUS), Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ), Ontario University Athletics (OUA), and Canada West Universities Athletic Association (CWUAA).
Each video promotes a different solution for breaking the stigma surrounding mental health. The five solutions are: language matters; educate yourself; be kind; listen and ask; and talk about it. The OUA video was centered around language matters—learning the right words to use and talking openly about your experiences.
Gryphon student athlete Marissa Kozovski, who plays attack for the women’s lacrosse team and who was featured in the OUA video, spoke to The Ontarion about the importance of talking about mental health.
“It’s about not having it be something that you can’t go to your friends or your teammates or your coaches with. It has to be something that you come to accept about yourself and about your teammates,” said Kozovski.“I think that everyone wants to help—they just don’t know what to say. If we talked about it more, it might be easier to help our friends and teammates.”
There are supports for student athletes on campus who are experiencing mental health issues. The Student Athlete Mental Health Initiative (SAMHI) is an initiative aimed towards increasing awareness among student athletes. Kozovski got involved with the Guelph SAMHI team, and through that was asked to be a spokesperson for the Bell Let’s Talk campaign.
Although the athletes who are a part of this campaign have been opponents on the field, for Bell Let’s Talk, they are all a part of one team.
Student athletes are often expected be able to do it all: school, practices and games, and maintain a social life. By bringing all these athletes together as one team to talk about mental health acknowledges what student athletes deal with on a day-to-day basis.
“Mental health is something that you live with day in and day out. It’s not something that comes and goes,” said Kozovski. “As student athletes, we’re told that you have to block that out. If you had a broken arm and you couldn’t write an exam, you’re not going to be told to tough through it. You have to take care of yourself and I think in university sports it needs to be more recognized as something that should be treated the same as a physical ailment.”
For the campaign, student athletes have been given Bell Let’s Talk toques to wear around campus, and speech bubbles where they can write anything they feel is an important message. In addition to this, there are 100 games in different sports happening across the country to promote Bell Let’s Talk.
For Guelph, the Frosty Mug on Jan. 19, which features the men’s hockey team in a showdown against Laurier, will be the Bell Let’s Talk game.Fans will receive temporary tattoos as well as thunder sticks and will have the opportunity to share their own messages about mental health on speech bubbles and banners at the Sleeman Centre.
For Kozovski, knowing that you’re not alone is important for everyone experiencing mental health related issues.
“It might be something that you’re embarrassed to talk about at first, but hopefully, through everything, it will be something that you’re not scared to talk about. Rely on your teammates, rely on your friends, talk to your coaches, reach out for help because people want to help.”
Photo by Karyn Stepien.