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Mental Health in Professional Sports: Athletes’ Examples

The article dives into the hidden struggles of professional athletes, revealing how stress, eating disorders, and pressure can impact their mental health. As mental health gains focus in sports, the piece highlights the growing support athletes now receive.

Mental Health in Professional Sports: Athletes’ Examples
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By

The Bridge Desk

Updated: 19 Dec 2024 12:05 PM GMT

Athletes are always admired by lots of people by their power, skills, and unlimited energy. Professional sportsmen inspire us to new achievements and go in for sports ourselves. However, athletes’ talent and popularity can be the high price for their mental health. Being mentally stable and calm is also a talent that is quite difficult to get for many people.

According to the latest statistics, mental health is one of the most crucial features of professional sports and one of the trends of the sports industry in 2024. More and more teams and athletes get psychological help from sports psychologists, group therapies, meditations, and self-trainings.

Stable mental health is the feature of other things doing which our calmness is under risk. This can be said about gambling, for example. Doctor Insights show gamblers methods to help them, empower them, and offer tools for their education in order not to let them be addicted to gambling.

The modern world pays a lot of attention to mental health, understanding that without our minds relaxed, we cannot be focused on work, rest, doing sports, or even loving our family. Professional athletes are under even more pressure than ordinary people and feel anxiety more often. This is because of their regular stress before and during tournaments, interactions with media, and hard everyday physical training.


Mental Problems Among Professional Athletes

To keep mental health stable, you need to know the foundation of mental disorders, their nature, and your potential to have such problems. Let’s discover several and common mental health concerns that athletes face in their lives.


Eating Disorders

Athletes usually have a very tight schedule to have time to eat 4 times a day and eat healthy and well-balanced food. Many athletes face a problem of eating disorders that can turn into bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating. These illnesses are mostly common among women who tend not to like their appearance and want to make it more and more wonderful. However, in many cases, tough diets don’t help at all. They’re very harmful to overall health and, moreover, to women’s reproductive systems.


Depression

Depression is the most common mental problem among not only athletes but also other people. Feeling anxiety, anger without any reason, lack of motivation, social isolation, loss of interest in anything, etc., can be signs of deep depression that needs to be cured by specialists.


Hyperactivity Disorder

When athletes hear about hyperactivity disorder or attention deficit, they think about medications to solve these problems, but the truth is that this disorder deals with our brain and overall well-being. This, like any other mental problem, should be discussed with family and doctors in order to first of all find reasons for such a disorder and only then start to be sure of it wisely.

Nevertheless, even being aware of such problems, we often don’t know what we can do to make us feel better and what the first thing we should do. Mental health problems are extremely common among modern athletes, and their stories you can easily learn from the interviews or articles. Below you will find some advice from sports stars on how to overcome your mental disorders and be happy.


  • A former German cricketer, Anuradha Doddaballapur, thinks that a little rest and talking to people whom she loves make her alive again after hard training or stress before competitions.
  • Lily Agg, a professional footballer, thinks that you need to find what makes you happy and your brain feels good and practice it in case of anxiety or stress.
  • Simone Biles, one of the best gymnasts in the world, faced mental problems after an unexpected death in her family. She mentioned in an interview that it’s normal to pause training and skip some competition in order to be around people you love and focus on yourself.
  • Michael Phelps, a great swimmer, faced alcoholism at the age of 30. This was because of the stress and a lot of attention he faced at the beginning of his career. It took him many years to learn that speaking about your problems is ok, and you certainly will get help after people know that you really need it.

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