Spotlight on mental health in student-athletes
Back-to-back volleyball games on Jan. 28 served as the University of Guelph’s official Mental Health Matchup (MHM) games.
The Student-Athlete Mental Health Initiative (SAMHI) named the game a Mental Health Matchup as part of their campaign to raise awareness about student-athlete mental health.
SAMHI began in 2015 and has grown to having teams on 18 postsecondary campuses across Canada. U of G’s MHM game is one of over 20 that have taken place.
Keith Hamilton, a fourth-year psychology major, is also a goaltender for the varsity men’s hockey team. He has been involved with the Guelph SAMHI team since last summer.
“I think [it’s about] just being more aware of the big role mental health does play and the fact that it’s missing that among varsity athletes,” Hamilton told The Ontarion. “I’ve had family members struggle with mental illness. I’ve seen it firsthand on the teams I’ve played on.”
As a psychology student, the mental health of student-athletes is one of Hamilton’s major interests.
“I’m actually doing a thesis on this,” said Hamilton. “Usually, students in general are more vulnerable to mental illness, just because the time is transitional. Student athletes on top of that have additional stressors, like more time commitment, injuries, that excessive stuff on top. To me, in the research I’ve looked at, athletes can be at a slightly higher vulnerability, so I think gearing more initiatives towards them could be good.”
The women’s volleyball team swept the game against the York Lions in three sets, each ending with a score of 25-16. Left side Victoria Golebiowski led the team with 11 kills and two aces.
The men’s team, however, fell to the Lions in three sets, marking their third straight loss in OUA regular season play.
“Right now, we’re here because we want to have more awareness so athletes know we are out here, and we’re able to connect athletes to mental health resources on campus as well as bring awareness to mental illness and reduce the stigma in postsecondary sport,” said Hamilton. “We’re here for visibility, to make sure people know that we’re out here.”
SAMHI’s co-founder and chief executive officer Samantha DeLenardo spoke with The Ontarion about reducing the mental health stigma in competitive athletics.
DeLenardo was a varsity hockey player at the University of Ottawa and wrote her master’s thesis on stigma in the sport environment.
“Most of what I’d seen was a lot of sport performance-type stuff. If there was any conversation regarding mental ‘activity’ or mental ‘work,’ it was always ‘How can I score more goals? How can I do better at my sport?’” said DeLenardo. “There was a big gap in terms of addressing this issue, particularly within the sport environment.”
DeLenardo co-founded SAMHI with Krista Van Slingerland as a not-for-profit organization in 2014 and the implementation of campus team programs began the following year.
“Really, the first step was sharing stories, because education is the best way to reduce stigma and reduce discrimination,” said DeLenardo. “As soon as we opened that platform up, the response was overwhelming.”
The SAMHI team quickly had input from current varsity athletes, former athletes, and parents from across Canada who wanted to contribute to the conversation.
“We’re student-athlete driven, and we strongly believe that student-athletes’ voices and experiences are incredibly important to guiding the directions of the work,” said DeLenardo.
In the last two years, the number of campus teams has doubled to 18. DeLenardo praises the impact that student-athletes can have on each other by having conversations about mental health.
“Having them be on campus to advocate and to lead this is so powerful, because when it comes to changing the conversation around mental illness and sport, it’s more powerful coming from peers than it is coming from the top down,” said DeLenardo. “We can create all these programs and initiatives, but unless student-athletes themselves are on board with it and supporting each other it’s not going to have much uptake.”
DeLenardo’s goal is to have a campus team at every university campus in Canada by 2020 and to begin creating teams at college campuses as well.
Although SAMHI’s growth is important, the priority right now is to equip student-athletes on each campus team with the skills and resources they need to make the program effective.
“We really want to make sure they have the tools that they need to execute with excellence on their campus,” said DeLenardo. “That’s really my focus—making sure we’re doing it right rather than quickly.”
Photo by Tasha Falconer.