MARISSAPEDERSEN_01

MSA is a student podcast that discusses the importance of mental health for student-athletes. They highlight statistics on mental health issues among student-athletes, such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. They also discuss the causes of mental health issues, including stress, expectations from coaches and teachers, and holding oneself accountable. The podcast aims to raise awareness and support for student-athletes' mental health. MSA is a collaborative student podcast that explores complex human questions from a variety of perspectives. Opinions and commentary are our own and do not reflect that of St. Ambrose University. Hi guys! Hi guys! Welcome to our podcast. So, there's going to be three people mainly directing this podcast. I'm Carly Langley, one of the people. I'm involved with St. Ambrose Dance and Honors. Hi, I'm Ruth Peterson. I'm also on the St. Ambrose Dance Team and in the Honors Program. Hi, my name is Brianna Neumiller. I will... Hi, I'm Bri. I'm a part of the SAU Track Team. I'm also involved in Honors and SGA. Okay, so mainly in this podcast what we're going to be talking about is the importance of mental health for student-athletes. One of our first main points talks about how mental health is a real thing for student-athletes. So, to start off, we want to reinstate that this is a... Hi guys! Hi! So, we are the three people that are mainly going to be directing this podcast. So, yeah, we'll introduce ourselves a little bit. I'm Carly Langley. I'm a freshman at SAU and I'm on the Dance Team and involved in Honors. Hi, I'm Ruth Peterson. I'm a freshman at SAU and I'm also involved in the SAU Dance Team and the Honors Program. I'm Brianna Neumiller. I'm on the Track and Field Team at SAU. I'm also doing Honors and SGA. During this podcast, we will be discussing mental health within student-athletes. We will also be talking about the complex human question, Are universities doing enough to support student-athletes and their mental health? So, this brings us to our first point. Mental health is a real thing for student-athletes. To start off, we want to reinstate that this is a real thing. Full-time student-athletes do struggle with their mental health. Some statistics to back this up are... In the Cambridge Behavioral Health article, the six most common mental health issues in student-athletes are mental exhaustion, anxiety, depression, stress, substance abuse, and eating disorders. According to the National Library of Medicine, the prevalence of this risk of depression in collegiate student-athletes range from 15.6% to 33.2%, with first-year students and particularly female student-athletes typically reporting more symptoms. Also, Belief Perform says that in female student-athletes, eating disorders were found at a much higher rate for athletes than non-student-athletes, with 8% of student-athletes suffering from bulimia and 1.5% suffering from anorexia. These rates are all comparatively higher than their non-athlete counterparts. This topic is very important for us because all three of us are first-year student-athletes with honestly too much on our plate, more than we'd like to admit. Yes, I would totally agree. College life is very busy. So another topic that we explored, or kind of segue into this, is we also know this is true because in an interview with R.A. Sarah Guncracker, she gave us information that over 75% of students have needed assistance with mental health problems that have been athletes. Another topic about this is there are also examples of student-athletes from bigger schools that are struggling with serious mental health issues. One example is a former Penn State former kicker, Joey Julius, struggled with depression, eating disorders, and struggled with body image. His depression and eating disorders were caused by his self-consciousness of his body type. He explains in an ESPN article how he was built different from the typical kicker body, and this has really affected him mentally to the point where he was considering suicide. He quote-unquote said, Luckily, he reached out for help and did not end up committing suicide. Wow, that is such a story. It honestly is so sad to hear that people our age are like considering committing suicide and all because of like sports and mental health issues because of that. Yeah, I think it's just so real in college. You know, there's just, especially with sports, there's just so much pressure onto it. Yeah. Yeah. Now that we have gone over mental health issues are a real thing for student-athletes, let's talk about what the causes and effects are. If you don't mind, you guys, I would really love to take the wheel with this topic. Yeah, of course. I say go for it. Okay, well, first of all, there are many causes to mental health, and it's not just an athlete thing. If you're struggling with your mental health, please reach out to anyone, a friend, parents, counselor, coaches, anyone who can help you is the best thing to do. Now, some of the causes of mental health, especially with student-athletes, is constant stress of maintaining elite athletic performance while balancing class and a healthy social life. And I feel like we all know what this is like. For me, I practice every day, and it's almost humanly impossible to have a great day every day. So some days, I'm just not feeling my best. My mind's not in a good place. I have too much stress due to homework or just drama in my social life. I'm just not going to be at my best. And this is something I have to be on good terms with to help my mental balance. And I can only assume it's a lot worse for you guys since you're on the dance team and, like, have to be perfect at practice all the time. Yeah, I totally agree. Well, especially going from high school to college dance team, it's a lot different. Practices are way longer. You have more practices, especially as we get closer to state now. I also agree that there is a lot of pressure to be perfect in dance. Like, you only get one shot to perform at nationals or state, and if you don't nail it, you kind of let your team down because this is what you've worked for all season. And that can really put a damper on your mental health because that's honestly a terrible feeling. Luckily, the Ambrose dance team is very, very supportive of each other when it comes to making mistakes. Yeah. Do you have anything to add, Marissa? Yeah, I agree with you, Carly, about the whole thing with dance. For me personally, throughout high school and college, it's been a lot of, like, pushing past the perfectionist mindset. I think with dance, it's always that stress of, like, you have to be the best at these tricks, always getting better, always stretching, always working out. And that puts a lot on you, especially with, like, time management, especially with all other activities and friends outside. And sometimes you have to create, like, a double life, you know? Exactly. And, like, we all have jobs right now. So we don't really talk about that and we don't go too much into this podcast about being a student athlete and having work. But you basically, if I can sum it up in two words, you, like, just don't have a social life. But, like, for practice... You're too tired to do anything else. Yeah. Right? And you have homework. Like, finals is coming up. Honestly. One thing that was really different coming from high school to college is having no time. And you touched on this a little bit, Carly, is that I'm at practice from 3.45 to about 7, 7.30 at night. And, like, the cafe's closed by that time. I get no dinner. Oh, yeah. All right. So that first little blurb that I said was basically stress. All right. The second is expectations from teachers and coaches. We've got to remember we are student athletes. Okay? Education. I feel like this is another cause of mental health and is backed up by Abigail Fagan, a professor at the University of Florida who has a Ph.D. in sociology. Coaches often feel pressured to win throughout the season. We all want to win. It's expected when you're a coach. Teachers sometimes and inadvertently project their anxiety onto the players. Regardless, this can break down a player's mental and physical health. It is eventually going to create a domino effect where one player will shut down and then another, and then the whole team basically just falls apart. Teachers also play a huge role in a student athlete. It is too hard to manage your school along with your athletics. Teachers expect you to have everything turned in complete on time and 100% correct. That sounds like not too much to ask, but when you're a full-time student and have six, maybe seven professors all at the same time having those same expectations for you, it gets really challenging. Yeah, I totally agree with that, Brie. Yeah, I agree. That can be challenging, especially with coaches that, I mean, it's their job to coach you. I mean, that's what they're doing. But sometimes it's hard to know the line between too far. You know what I mean? Right, yeah. But they just place really heavy expectations that sometimes you can't meet, like balancing a full schedule. And I think with professors, sometimes you have practice or workouts, and all of a sudden you get home and you're like, oh, well, I have to read all these articles and write these papers. When I get home at 7.30, hangry from practice, and I have three hours of homework to do, I'll also sleep and eat at the same time. I know my dance team has a really long practice coming up. I think our practice is from, like, 12 to 8 at night, and it's because we're getting so close to state. And, by the way, I want to put in that I'm not even in season. Like, you guys haven't been in season. They're doing doubles. They have to wake up at 5 a.m. Yeah, and then workout at 5.15. All right, so I don't know about you guys, but along with the expectations comes holding yourself accountable. Personally, if I don't meet my very high standards, I am just so hard on myself. I just tear myself down mentally. And I know some of my teammates do as well. They've literally cried at practice. So what do you guys, like, do you guys hold yourself accountable? Do you think this is a commonality with all athletes? Yeah, I agree with you. I think, again, with the perfectionist mindset, you're just always like, well, I can do better. And if you don't, you're like, oh, what do I do now? And some effects that athletes can see when they're struggling with mental health is a decline in their academic performance. As we kind of said, we just don't have any motivation or not we. But they can – let me start over. So some effects that athletes can see – some effects that athletes can see when struggling with – I got to read the fucking words. And here are some effects that athletes can see when struggling with mental health. They can see a decline in their academic performance, sometimes having no motivation to do anything, including homework, going to study groups, reaching out to professors. It just all seems like too much when you're dealing with so much already. You can also see a decline in social life, just not having enough energy to go hang out with friends, go to social events on campus. They don't feel like doing anything with anyone. But along with this, student athletes can very much feel self-conscious that they're not going out and having fun or not being on top of themselves. This can lead to, you know, depression, anxiety, even body issues or body image issues. They sometimes can feel like they don't belong on the team if you're making mistakes constantly, you know, that affects their athletic performance. Yeah, I totally agree with that last statement. I'm coming onto a very, very good college dance team, very competitive as a high schooler who wasn't on a dance team for more than one year. So I think that it's very – the transition is very hard, especially as a freshman. And I did experience a lot of times where I felt like I didn't belong on the team or, like, because I was making mistakes, like, I shouldn't be talking to these people because, like, they're better than me. So, like, I don't know, it's hard to explain, but just the mindset. Yeah, and, like, just outside of practice, it can cause you a lot of stress. And, like, I remember, like, I cried for a long time for the first weeks of school because it was just a tough transition, and you feel like you're letting your team down and your coaches down. But I think that it's important to kind of go through that because then you can kind of see how you can push yourself and it makes you a better dancer, better other stuff. All right. It can also affect their work poorly. Just, like, their work mindset, you know, they just don't have it. They just don't have it. Yeah. Like, and so we talked about us all having jobs, so this is kind of like our own testimony. But, like, it really does affect your work. Like, sometimes you're just extremely exhausted and you just can't get out of bed to save your life, and you have to, like, call off or, like, find someone to pick up your shift, or you just go in and, like, face the music, and it's just, like, a tough night. So after all the effects we just went over, we're going to give you guys some solutions. I know we're going to lighten the mood a little bit. Marissa, do you want to take it from here? Yeah, I'd love to, Brie. Some of the solutions that we have down are more interventions to take more precautions to help student-athletes ask for the help they need when dealing with mental issues. If we have more interventions and talk more about how it's okay to struggle at practice and not to have that perfectionist mindset all the time, maybe it will be easier for athletes to come forward and ask for the help they need. Also, not only talking about how it is okay to be dealing with mental health problems, but also talking about how struggling is how you grow as an athlete and an individual. Persevering through these struggles will not only make you a better athlete, but also improve your character and show that you are a hard worker, but will also improve your mental toughness and ability to process through tough situations. I totally agree with this statement. Yeah, like, having more awareness surrounding, like, this whole supporting athletes, like... I think it makes people less afraid to, like, come forward and ask that kind of thing and get help. The dance team does an okay job of having mental health people there. We have, every so often, I think we have mental health meetings and we kind of do some activities and talk about how everyone's doing. And Emma, I've interviewed Emma Schoonover, and she talked a little bit about this. Yeah, I also, like, especially for the track team, we are very, since we do practice every single day, and from three to seven, basically, we are very, like, if you're struggling with mental health, like, don't come. If you're having one of those days, it is better for you to, like, kind of take a step back, kind of revisit this whole, like, why am I here type mindset, like, try and get better, have a night for, like, some... Yeah, instead of coming to practice, like... Right, exactly, because the best, like, you're just not going to be at your best. It's kind of going to be a waste of time, because you're not going to want to perform up to, you know, the standards that you set yourself, so it's just going to make you worse. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So, I think this kind of concludes all our points. Talking to people and seeking help, like... Yeah, I can just say how SAU has a really positive place for it. I think a way we can end this is, especially if you are a student-athlete, even if you're not, please reach out if you are struggling with these mental issues. One way, since we are on St. Ambrose University, if you are an SAU student, you can go to the counseling center on campus. The St. Ambrose University Counseling Center provides our students free one-on-one support, confidential counseling, mental health screenings, and more in a supportive and collaborative environment. Yes, and you get seven free consultations, so use those up. Please do. Yeah, they're per semester. Even if you're not, like, willing to go to a counselor, like, just speak up to a friend, like, I'm sure they would love to help you and, like, obviously they're your friends. They'll be there for you, like, 100% of the time. Friends, coaches, parents, athletes, anyone who cares about you, they will have an ear to listen. So you can say even if you're not. Even if you're not on SAU, please do reach out. There are hotlines, message groups, online platforms, basically lots of different things. Open discussion to talk about coaches and SAU. Oh, wait. So then we have to talk about restate pieces. Yeah, we can just go there. All right. You want me to do that? Yeah, you can do that. In conclusion. Do you want me to say our thesis, maybe? Yeah. Okay. I mean, you don't have to. Any conclusions? During the podcast, we discussed how mental health with student-athletes is a real thing, some causes and effects it can create, and solutions we found to combat it. There are many causes and effects of these mental health problems. However, we think there are – Now that I said that, you can rephrase that, and we'll just, like, try and mash it up. What did you start with? I said during the podcast, we discussed how these things, these things down here are about to happen. Okay. You can just read the in conclusion, and then we can try and, like, hear about it. Just read it. Go ahead. Yeah, it's all good. During the podcast, we discussed how mental health with student-athletes is a real thing, and there are many causes and effects of these mental health problems. However, we think that there are solutions that could prevent some of these effects that student-athletes deal with. Okay. So that was, like, the thesis statement. We reinstated it. Okay, wait. One second. Okay. We also talked about the complex human question, are universities doing enough to support student-athletes in their mental health? I think they are. You know, at SAU, they provide a counseling center. They do provide the seven free sessions. For our campus, I say yes. For others, I can't speak on behalf of because I don't go there, but I say yes. And then we want to thank you guys for listening and joining us for today. Thanks so much, guys. This was really fun. I hope you enjoyed our kind of ideology about this topic. Yep. And if you are struggling, please reach out. This podcast is recorded at the studios of KALA-FM, St. Ambrose University. Opinions expressed are not necessary to those of KALA Radio or St. Ambrose University. This podcast, it's recording. This podcast was recorded at the studios of KALA-FM, St. Ambrose University. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of KALA Radio or St. Ambrose University. Bye, guys.