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Kira Scandi, a junior biology major at the College of the Holy Cross, conducted research on the mental health of college student-athletes. She found that athletes face additional pressures and demands, such as competitions and daily practices, which can impact their mental well-being. Lack of sleep, poor nutrition, and the coach-athlete relationship also play a role in mental health. There is a stigma surrounding mental health in the athletic community, which prevents student-athletes from seeking help. Kira emphasizes the importance of creating a culture that prioritizes mental health and encourages athletes to seek support. She also discusses the need to address the stigma surrounding mental health and increase mental health literacy among student-athletes. Hello, my name is Kira Scandi, and I'm a junior biology major at the College of the Holy Cross. For my final research project in Lifespan and Development, I decided to research the mental health and well-being of college student-athletes, and the tension between athletic performance and academic obligation. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has over 360,000 student-athletes who attend and compete at universities around the United States. As a student, I see myself on the swimming and diving team here at Holy Cross. This topic is important to me because mental health is something that anyone can struggle with, but athletes experience additional pressures and demands, including competitions, daily practices, and less time for sleep and academic assignments. Student-athletes must maintain a full course load, work out to meet the physical demands necessary to succeed in their sport, adapt to frequent traveling for competition, and cope with injuries, all while experiencing public pressure to be successful both athletically and academically. There is also a stigma surrounding mental health in the athletic community, and the reluctancy of student-athletes to seek help because of the public and self-stigma contributes to their poor mental health and well-being. Before I discuss the stigma surrounding mental health for college athletes, I would like to dive into some of the health behaviors and factors that can lead to poor mental health. Some of these behaviors are sleep habits, eating, and relationships with peers and coaches. Athletes are educated from a young age on the importance of healthy eating and sufficient quality sleep, but oftentimes that education dwindles as we get older and enter our college years. This, in combination with busier lifestyles while at college, impacts the type of food we reach for and how much we are able to sleep. At Holy Cross, athletes on my team wake up at 5 a.m. to their practice at 5.30 multiple times each week, which cuts deep into our normal sleep cycle, oftentimes leaving us feeling boggy and tired for the rest of the day. In the Journal of American College Health, D'Souza and her colleagues examined health behaviors such as eating, sleeping, and substance use and the effect those behaviors have on mental health functioning, for example, psychological distress and perceived stress. The participants were 183 NCAA D1 athletes, and they completed a health and wellness survey. It was found that female athletes reported more healthy dietary habits and attention to nutrition, whereas males reported more sleep, drug use, and aggressive behaviors. Collegiate athletes with more impulsive behaviors, like aggressive acts and greater alcohol consumption, combined with a regular sleep schedule and subsequent fatigue, were found to be at heightened risk for less effective emotional regulation. These results suggest the importance of sleep and nutrition in effective emotional regulation and mental health functioning. Another study I looked into elaborated on the importance of sleep and how lack of sleep correlates to poor academic performance. Practice time, travel, competition, balancing academics and athletics, and student life are factors that may adversely affect sleep, including athletics. In a sleep study that Schroeder and his colleagues performed, they obtained data from 8,312 collegiate athletes between 2011 and 2014, and their findings showed that sleep difficulty is associated with increased likelihood of B or C averages. Initial insomnia was associated with increased likelihood of B or C or even D or F averages, and tiredness was associated with increased likelihood of B, C, D, F averages. This lack of sleep impacts more than just grades or athletic performance in college, however, as it can limit employment opportunities and career aspirations after graduation and lead to lower lifetime wages. Interestingly enough, in a survey I sent out to student athletes here at Holy Cross, 76.9% of the 13 respondents feel that they do not get enough sleep throughout the school year. However, the majority responded that they feel they are performing moderately well to excellent academically. This may be because of the regular daily efforts of students specifically at Holy Cross, but could also be because of my significantly smaller sample size. Regardless, the overarching data shows that sufficient quality sleep is crucial to academic performance. Sleep is important for anyone, but sufficient sleep is necessary for athletes to do well not only in their sport, but their classes while at college and their future after they graduate. The final factor I looked into was the coach-athlete relationship. This topic was especially interesting to me as I had not previously thought about the coach-athlete relationship impacting mental health. Athletes typically spend a considerable amount of time with their coaches, and the type of relationship they have with this person can greatly affect their mental health. Social support acts as a buffer from stress, and among college students social support has been related to lower risk of presenting depressive and anxiety symptoms. In a recent study conducted by Powers and her colleagues, the power of the coach-athlete relationship in the prediction of depression and psychological well-being was examined. 79 student athletes completed online measures of depression, anxiety, psychological quality of life, and coach-athlete relationship. Results showed that both personality and coach-athlete relationship were significantly correlated to mental health outcomes. The researchers concluded that coaches can be an important source of social support and can instill confidence in their athletes. However, coaches can also be a source of stress with a poor coach-athlete relationship adding stress in the athlete's lives. In another article that I will discuss later written by Beasley and her colleagues, they described how the stigma of mental health in sport may also speak to a larger cultural belief in elite sport of mental toughness, where coaches and training staff teach athletes to, quote, tough it out. This tough-it-out attitude discourages student-athletes from seeking mental health care for fear of looking weak and losing playing time, and thus perpetuates mental health stigma. However, research suggests that coaches' attitudes towards mental health and mental health seeking may directly impact the likelihood that student-athletes seek help. Therefore, coaches and athletic trainers need to create a team culture that prioritizes the mental health of their athletes. I feel lucky to have a strong tight-knit relationship with my coaches here at Holy Cross, and every Holy Cross student that I surveyed seems to feel the same. When asked if they feel comfortable reaching out to the coach if they need to miss a practice for an academic obligation, 100% of the respondents replied yes. In addition, when asked if they feel they have a strong support system, the respondents unanimously agreed that they do. Feeling free to communicate when you are struggling is crucial to creating healthy relationships, fostering trust, and instilling coaching education that targets specific behaviors to support student-athletes' psychological well-being and mental health could benefit athletes struggling with their mental health. Now that I have established what factors can contribute to poor mental health among student-athletes, I would like to talk about the stigma surrounding the topic. I participated in sports from a young age, doing gymnastics until age 14 before starting diving. Mental health was something that wasn't discussed often, and those struggling with mental health generally kept it to themselves. Even now, we see trends in reluctance to seek help. In a survey I sent out to student-athletes on campus, most athletes indicated that they are not very comfortable reaching out to a mental health professional, with eight reporting between a 1 out of 10 to 5 out of 10 on a comfort scale. However, three people responded that they feel moderately comfortable seeking help or advice, and two responded that they feel very comfortable. Knowing that there are options available for communication and treatment and feeling free to reach out to an adult knowledgeable on the topic of mental health is the first step to stopping the stigma. The article I referenced earlier by Beasley and her colleagues looked into the stigma surrounding mental health and found that athletes have high rates of mental health stigma, which can contribute to them avoiding treatment or seeking help with their mental health. The researchers discussed the stressors a student-athlete undergoes during their time in college and assessed mental health literacy, or MHL, which is the knowledge and beliefs people have about mental health conditions, which helps in their recognition, management, or prevention. Some of these stressors include time management, outside pressure, academics, family expectations, the need to maintain optimal physical health, and overall cumulative stress. Having adequate MHL is associated with better health outcomes, such as suicide prevention. It was found that student-athletes have adequate levels of foundational MHL but may not yet have the practical skills to use their knowledge. Pressure was outlined as a stressor in mental health, and seeing how much pressure an athlete feels is put on them and how much pressure they put on themselves from my fellow teammates was eye-opening. The respondents from the survey I sent to Holy Cross students said that they felt outside pressure between a 5 out of 10 to 9 out of 10 and personal pressure between a 6 out of 10 to 10 out of 10. Researchers Hillard and his colleagues looked deeper into the stigma surrounding seeking help among student-athletes who experience intense time demands, highly regimented schedules, and pressure to be successful both academically and athletically. They interviewed 328 student-athletes and asked questions regarding public and self-stigma. Public stigma refers to the belief that society perceives seeking help for mental health treatment as undesirable and individuals who seek help as socially unacceptable. Self-stigma represents an internalization of public stigma that an individual believes he or she is socially undesirable for seeking treatment. One reason that stigma is especially important among collegiate athletes is the sociocultural aspect of sport, where the need for seeking help is de-emphasized with a perception that individuals who seek help are weak. A person can oftentimes realize that they are struggling with mental health but avoid seeking help for fear of looking weak or losing fighting time. However, this tough-it-out attitude in a sport perpetuates the stigma, and normalizing seeking help can change the narrative and normalize mental health as a key aspect of a sport. Hillard and his colleagues found that attitudes surrounding seeking mental health treatment play a crucial role in determining help-seeking behavior, and researchers should continue working to find methods of improving attitudes towards counseling. Now that I have discussed the stigma surrounding mental health, I would like to talk about approaches to this topic that can benefit student-athletes in their daily lives while in college. NCAA athletics, especially Division I, is a high-stakes environment where excellence is the expectation. To reach and stay at a level of excellence, athletes often adopt a performance-centric attitude. Researchers Whitehead and colleagues make an effort to resolve the challenges of balance and mental health in the lives of G1 college athletes and discuss how these conflicts are a consequence of this performance-centric model of sports. The researchers pose two problems for student-athletes, health and well-being as well as development. As athletes, we tend to care more about the way of progress rather than getting an understanding of what it means to be healthy, that is, to be whole and balanced. Because most of us have never thought about what perfection and completeness mean, we take our notion of these from society, and society often tends to sacrifice health at the expense of performance. Our health isn't the only thing that is at stake here, however. Ex-essential humanistic psychologist by the name of Erickson wrote a great deal about human growth and development. The third psychosocial stage that he describes is the tension between initiative and guilt. He explains how success in sports is a solution to this tension, that is, that willing alleviates a sense of guilt, when the athlete's well-being will be tied to her performance. If that athlete does not perform well, gets injured, or retires, this will not only change their worldview, it will also make them question their meaning and purpose that they have previously associated with their sport. Their development, not only in their sport, but in their life as a whole, is hindered. The performance-centric model of sports is detrimental to athletes. By adopting a new approach called the Mindfulness Acceptance Commitment, or MAC approach, can be beneficial to not only their success in athletics and academics, but their overall well-being. The researcher's growth and his colleagues' hope to reduce feelings of anxiety, eating concerns, and psychological distress among athletes This approach is the first sport psychology intervention geared towards mindfulness and the promotion of acceptance and nonjudgmental present moment awareness. The MAC's approach to performance enhancement is based upon the premise that optimal performance does not necessarily result from anxiety reduction, increasing confidence, and minimizing negative cognitions. Rather, the MAC approach proposes that performance outcomes are influenced by an athlete's ability to remain present with his or her internal experiences, while persisting with the task at hand despite possible internal discomfort, and without losing focus on the environmental demands of a given performance. The researchers found that MAC participants demonstrated reduced generalized anxiety, eating concerns, and psychological distress, as well as increased psychological flexibility. MAC participants also demonstrated improved sport performance from pre-intervention to post-intervention. The overall results suggest that the MAC is an effective intervention for the mental health and sport performance needs of collegiate athletes. In my interview with Noah Peterson, he outlined further the importance of mindfulness in improving mental health for athletes. I referenced a survey on mental health that I sent out to my teammates earlier, and I feel it is beneficial in demonstrating what the average student on a college campus experiences. Mental health is equally important as physical health, but my findings from the survey that I sent out to student-athletes on campus indicated that 84.6% do not utilize the mental health resources at Holy Cross. Despite 92.3% feeling overwhelmed with workload and athletic obligations, 92.3% experiencing feelings of anxiety, and 61.5% experiencing feelings of depression. What I found interesting from my data was that 100% reported that they feel a lot of stress in everyday basis while at campus, at a 6 out of 10 or higher, but 95% of the respondents indicated that they are very happy at the College of the Holy Cross, checking off 7 out of 10 or higher for happiness. This data shows that poor mental health, including feelings of stress, anxiety, depression, which is oftentimes stigmatized, is in fact very normal. A student can feel like they are overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, or sad, while still feeling happy overall at school. Normalizing these feelings creates awareness for others who may feel the same way, and shows them that they are not alone and should feel free to discuss their mental health with a professional if they choose to do so. Adopting the MAC approach in addition to utilizing knowledge on MHL can change the way students view mental health topics and help them in succeeding in their sport. Student-athletes can decrease the stigma and create awareness surrounding mental health by advocating mental health literacy on their college campus and normalizing mental health as a part of their sport. Using their contacts both with the athletic community and the general student body, they can influence a broader culture on campus. Therefore, having student-athletes as leaders of mental health campaigns can be promising in decreasing mental health stigma campus-wide. Athletes on my team and other teams at Holy Cross have discussed their mental health in interviews and on Holy Cross' social media pages, which I believe has been an effective strategy at communicating to others in the community that they are not alone and their feelings are important and valid. I hope that this podcast and the upcoming interview make efforts in destigmatizing poor mental health and create greater awareness surrounding factors that can lead to poor mental health, with the end goal of improving not only athletic and academic performance, but overall well-being. As part of my research, I thought it would be beneficial to interview a sports psychologist for the athletes at the College of the Holy Cross. I'm here with Noah Peterson, who graduated with a master's in professional psychology in 2020, followed by a doctorate in clinical psychology from William James College in 2022. Noah joined the College of the Holy Cross in 2023 as the coordinator of student-athletes' psychological services, following several years of internships and postdoctoral work. Thank you for meeting with me, Noah. How are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. So, for this project, I wanted to research the causes of poor mental health and ways student-athletes struggle with athletic performance and academic obligation. I believe discussing ways a student-athlete can improve their mental health is the first step to erasing the stigma and creating a positive mindset while at school. And I thought you were the perfect person to talk to about this topic. So, Noah, first, what strategies do you use to help athletes cope with anxiety and depression? Sure. I mean, a lot of the strategies that I use for anxiety and depression with athletes are very similar to the ones that I use with anyone else. The difference mostly being kind of accommodating an athlete's schedule or accommodating the different parts of a person that kind of become stronger from being an athlete. So, for example, athletes tend to be a little bit more perfectionistic than other students and that kind of thing. So, kind of having those differences in mind and then using strategies that I would use with a lot of different people, but kind of specifically the ones that tend to work better with those things. Awesome. How do you feel an athlete should deal with pressure from their coaches, professors, or teammates? Sure. So, pressure from coaches, professors, and teammates. I think, in general, the way that I think athletes should deal with it is a couple different things. One, using the supports around you is really important. So, whether that's, you know, you get along well with a coach or an assistant coach or your trainer, you've got friends and family that are supportive. But also, you know, if you need to come talk to someone like me or talk to someone else just like in sports admin or whatever, a lot of them are kind of open ears, that kind of thing. Using those supports around you can be really helpful. Going beyond that, there's different strategies, and I can kind of give a preview of a couple if you want, that are generally meant to help with just sort of alleviating pressure. Basically, giving someone the capability to kind of handle the things that are thrown at them. The idea being that we have a lot of this inside of us already, and so kind of bringing that forward. So, one of those strategies that I've had to give kind of a preview is a kind of goal setting. SMART goals is a kind of goal setting that a lot of people have heard of. It's an acronym. And the general idea of SMART goals is to try to set goals that are realistic, they're attainable, measurable, that kind of thing. The key part that I try to focus on, especially with athletes, is the realistic part. Just in the sense of, like, when you're setting goals, especially goals that are meant to deal with pressure, you don't want your goals to be like, okay, I'm going to get everything done, and it's going to feel all better, and it's going to be great, right? Because the idea is, like, perfect isn't really attainable, we're just trying to get the best that we can to do things. So, setting those goals and still be kind of lofty and ambitious, but not so far ahead that we're putting more pressure on ourselves. Another kind of, I guess one other example of something that I might talk with an athlete about in terms of dealing with pressure from coaches, professors, teammates, that kind of thing, is also communication and how we're communicating. Really focusing on, like, being open with people you can be open with. If there's people you can't be open with, how to navigate that. But also, just within that, the more that your coach or your professors know about what's going on, like, if you can show a professor your schedule and say, like, this is why it's so hard to get all the work done for your class, that can go a long way to sort of helping a professor understand and helping them kind of come alongside you rather than it being kind of a battle against each other. Outside of that, with pressure, it's a lot of the stuff that I would talk about with pressure in general. I tend to have a kind of, what we in psychology would call a behavioral approach, and so that focuses on kind of identifying that, okay, our thoughts, our behaviors, our feelings are all kind of linked together, and so when we're trying to improve our feelings or our emotions, that kind of thing, that can be hard. It's hard to just be like, I'm going to feel better, that kind of thing, right? But it's easier to pick on behaviors and to say, like, okay, these are things that I'm going to do to make me feel better, to help me feel better, that kind of thing. So a lot of it is, like, for pressure, it's like different coping skills, ways to give yourself a break, things like that, that just give you a little bit of a reason. Yeah, I definitely agree. Communication and goal setting is really important. How important would you say sleep and nutrition is in maintaining peak performance levels, both academically and athletically? Sure. So, I mean, it's crucial. From a psychology standpoint and kind of a mental health standpoint, if you don't have kind of the fuel that your body needs, then you can't perform at your best, right? So from an athletic standpoint within that, it's like, if you don't have good enough nutrition, if you're not getting enough sleep, your body can't do what you're capable of. You can't reach your potential. It's the same from a mental health standpoint, the same from an academic standpoint, where if you're not getting those things that you need, you're kind of starting off behind, right? So I often think if you put it on, like, a graph or something like that, instead of starting from zero, you're starting from negative 20. And so if you're starting from negative 20, even if you're going to go up 60, 80 points, you're going to get to a 40 or a 60 rather than an 80 or a 60, you know, that kind of thing. So it's really crucial as kind of the building blocks for everything, not to mention the kind of physical impact that it can have to not have these things going well for you can also kind of take a toll mentally. So kind of building that into athletic and academic performance, it's really kind of the first step almost in terms of having those things go well is having these kind of, like, base needs taken care of. Once you have that, then you can start tackling the other stuff. Makes sense. So you touched on this a little bit before, but what techniques do you recommend for an athlete to handle snowballing? So, like, when schoolwork, sports, stress all kind of pile up at the same time. And how can an athlete maintain a positive mindset during this time? Sure, yeah. So one of the things is the kind of goals that I mentioned before, and that one can be really helpful. Kind of building on from that, when things start to pile up, a lot of it's about kind of identifying, like, tackle one thing at a time, do it that way, right? So when it's within those goals, I like to really encourage people to break things down, right? If you've got three papers and four assignments and all this kind of stuff coming at you, it really helps to break those down. So take, like, one of the papers and go, okay, that's what I need to get first. It's do the first or I'm the most stressed out about it or whatever. This is what I'm going to work on first. And then even within that paper, break it down, right? Like, okay, now I've got this paper. I'm going to split the paper up into, let's say, four parts, right? And then kind of once you have that, just putting it on a schedule or something like that, whether it's a schedule or a planner or whatever, putting it on something and then tackling that one at a time. So get the first section done. Then get the second section done. A lot of times the hardest thing when things start to snowball like this is just getting the ball rolling, right, just starting the things, because it can be such a big mountain to start climbing. So I think it's really helpful to kind of break those things down into smaller pieces so that each smaller piece is much more approachable, right? When you've got five 10-page papers, if you've got it right, that's 50 pages. But if you break each of those papers down into four parts, okay, suddenly then, yeah, you've got a lot more parts, but you've got two-page parts, you know, that kind of thing. And two pages is a lot more approachable than 10 pages, a lot more approachable than 50 pages, and that can be really helpful to just kind of getting things going. Absolutely. Do you believe that mental training is as important as physical training, and what are the benefits of meditation? Sure. So the first part of that question in terms of mental and physical training, the answer, I mean, ultimately is yes. They kind of come at different points. When someone's at this level of athletic ability, when you're playing D1 sports or you're a pro or something like that, you're already at an elite enough level that it really is just as important. Now, I'm not going to tell a toddler learning how to kick a soccer ball the first time that, like, then kind of training mentally on how to do it is going to make them better at kicking a soccer ball. But once you've got that skill, once you have the muscle memory down and those kind of things, then, yeah, the mental side of it is really important. I don't remember the quote exactly, but one thing that I often use is a woman who was the head of Barcelona, the soccer club's sports psychology kind of realm, talked about how basically you can have all of the ability in the world. You can have the highest potential in the world, right? Soccer-wise, you could be the next Messi or Ronaldo, right? But you can't reach that potential if you're not mentally stable, but it's a translation, right? So if you don't have kind of, like, the mental side of things taken care of, you're never going to be able to reach that kind of threshold, right? And so the mental kind of training aspect is crucial because you need to be able to give yourself the opportunity to reach your potential. In terms of the second part, meditation is a huge, huge good thing, right? Like, there's lots of benefits. So if we're going to talk just factually, there's things like it improves intention, it improves focus, it improves memory, it helps with some physiological stuff like helps with immune system regulation and kind of because you're looser, you're going to get injured less often and things like that. So meditation itself is really good. Meditation falls under a broader category called mindfulness, which is something that I talk about a lot and I think it's really important and it's something that's super well-researched and there's lots of evidence that it works. Mindfulness is great because it does a couple of things. One, it has all those benefits that I just mentioned, but two, it helps with the idea of, like, staying in the moment, right? That's kind of, if you're really going to boil mindfulness down into one statement, I think it would kind of be that, which is staying in the moment, right? And so when you're playing out on the field or you're in practice or you're even in class or something like that, a lot of times all these other things, if you talk about snowballing, all the things that you've got to do can kind of really pile up and become bigger and bigger and bigger and we start stressing out about them and we're thinking about either, like, past mistakes or what's going to be stressful in the future. We're not really ever spending a lot of time thinking about what's going on right now. The general idea being, whatever's going on this second, right, not the next second, not the second before, but whatever's going on this second is pretty manageable and then kind of going from there, once you can get into the moment, it's about kind of just taking each moment one at a time. What are some techniques you would recommend for improving focus and concentration in the classroom? Sure, so part of that is that mindfulness aspect, right, using those. Those can be, like, daily routine practices that people can do. I often say if someone's having a really hard time focusing in class, that kind of thing, like, do a little quick, like, some of the mindfulness stuff, if we're talking about, like, different ones like body scans or guided imagery, those take five, ten minutes, right, so do it before class or something like that. Do it while you're walking to class. You can just, like, put on headphones and listen to it. But beyond that stuff that I've already talked about, there's some other kind of strategies that you can use. One of them, I think, is really nice and I think a lot of athletes kind of can struggle with this in terms of, like, the sitting still in class and getting restless and that kind of thing. We're so used to moving around so much, right? So, fidget things actually have a pretty significant effect on helping moderate attention. And so one of the things that I tell people to do is, like, try to find some, like, fidget-type stuff. I mean, everyone knows about fidget spinners and these things. The other one kind of in addition that I often talk about is kind of a type of note-taking that's just, like, a very involved type of note-taking, right? And it basically boils down to when the professor's talking or you're looking at a PowerPoint, instead of, like, writing down verbatim what's up there, try to paraphrase everything. Try to kind of rephrase everything. Try to make everything in your own words. That kind of idea. It does two things. One, if you're putting in your own words, it's a little more likely that you're going to remember it. And two, it makes you work with it. And the idea is you're involving a different part of your memory when you're doing that, which really helps kind of, one, keep you attuned to what's going on because you just have to be to do this. And then two, beyond that, it helps you be more likely to remember whatever you're writing down because you've had to do more work with it. It's not just, like, a rote memory thing at that point. That's interesting. How can an athlete effectively communicate with their coaches and professors when they're experiencing these mental health issues? Gotcha. This one's always a tricky one, right? Because a lot of times there's reasons that that's not happening perfectly. So the baseline of it is, like, any communication is good communication is often what I say. So if you feel like you've got a good enough relationship with your coach or kind of professors or anyone around you to kind of say, hey, I'm struggling right now, right? Not trying to make excuses, not trying to get ahead of things, but just saying it's really hard right now and kind of just having them know that and then kind of the support and leeway and whatever else can come from that. That works great when there's enough kind of trust there and that kind of thing. There's no illusions that everyone has a perfect relationship with their coaches or a perfect relationship with professors. And so I often, that's kind of where the any communication is good communication. If you can't bring yourself to say it's really hard for me right now, then it can be like, you know what, this assignment's been difficult for me and I'm going to try to get some help with it or something like that. Just kind of giving them something to kind of know what's going on. I often say the worst thing that you can do is just not tell anyone anything and you're late to practice or you miss an assignment and everyone's just like, what the heck's going on? And you're like, then you tell them that things are going on and then it sounds like an excuse back to them. So I would say any communication is good communication and then kind of building on that, any time you feel like you can't communicate, right, whether it's like you feel like a coach doesn't like you or a professor's mad at you or whatever, it's like involve those supports that we talked about before. So family, friends, but also even coming to talk to someone like me, coming to talk to other professional staff at school that can really help to get people on your side, get people working for you, and oftentimes find some answers that you might not have known existed or can help communicate with the professors. At Holy Cross, the nice thing is there's the class teams and one of the things that I often use the class teams for is if someone's really struggling and just having a hard time, they're a great resource to communicate with professors and they're really good about communicating with professors on behalf of the students. The student doesn't have to be the one telling a professor that they're really depressed or something like that. Right, and so oftentimes it's about kind of me and the student communicating with the class team and then letting them kind of disseminate the information from there in a way that kind of works out. The only other thing I would kind of add to all of this is that whenever you're communicating with people, the more kind of respect that you can convey and that kind of thing goes a long way. People are so much more likely to want to help you if they feel like they're being respected and being asked rather than being demanded. And so oftentimes when someone's like, oh, I'm going to talk to a professor, I will ask them what they're going to say and things like that because I want to make sure that they're setting themselves up for success by just kind of, even if it's kind of asking for something that's important or that the professor doesn't have a choice, still phrasing it in a way that's respectful and kind of honoring their dignity and things like that because if you put them on the defensive, they're not going to want to help. Yeah, absolutely. I think with the stigma surrounding mental health, especially among student athletes, it's sometimes hard to communicate, but I agree that any communication is better than no communication. Thank you so much for your time. I think that all these techniques will be super beneficial to students' mental health, both in and out of their sport. Thank you for sharing your expertise. I appreciate it. Sure, no problem.
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