By Leighanne Jordan
Grace Mack, a junior cross country and track and field athlete runs at BU's track.
Athletes are humans, too, with minds, bodies, and emotions like everyone else. Is the pressure of being an athlete too destructive?
Grace Mack, a sophomore cross-country and track and field athlete at Bellarmine knew she needed help when she ended up in the hospital her sophomore year of high school. Mack, a runner and natural-born athlete knew, she wanted to be “smaller and lighter,” and chose unhealthy, risky eating behaviors.
She spent the majority of her high school career in and out of the hospital and spent time in a residential treatment program but continued to have an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise.
She withdrew from her first semester at Bellarmine and found herself back in the hospital and then returned to Bellarmine.
“I was out of running for two years because I had a really bad eating disorder and I was not allowed to run,” Mack said.
According to Athletes for Hope, an organization that targets mental health awareness in college athletes and athletes in general, 33% of college students experience symptoms of depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions. Approximately 35% of college athletes suffer from a mental health crisis.
With mental health concerns rising, the NCAA conducted follow-up well-being studies for its athletes in 2020. In these studies, the data indicated rates of mental exhaustion, anxiety and depression 1.5 to 2 times higher than in previous years.
College athletes often feel an immense pressure to perform perfectly, instead of focus on overall well-being. “It is especially tough in sports because of mental health because we are taught to push through pain, physical and mental pain,” Mack said. “It is normal among athletes because we push ourselves to our limits.”
Additionally, college athletes are expected to juggle the same tasks as their non-athlete classmates, including earning good grades and having social lives.
“Your mental health co-exists with your physical health,” said Justice Pohlman-Singleton, a junior cross country and track and field athlete. “If I don’t have a good mental health day, it impacts how I preform that day.”
Suicide remains the third leading cause of death among the general college student population and in college athletes, suicide ranks fourth as leading cause of death, according to Ashwin L. Rao in the article published by the British Journal of Sports medicine titled, “Understanding depression and suicide in college athletes: emerging concepts and future directions.”
A 22-year-old Stanford University soccer player, Katie Meyer, committed suicide on March 1. Though there were no warning signs the night of her suicide, she had been coping with mental health problems, according to her parents in an article published by CNN titled, “Suicides among college athletes have grieving parents and students calling for NCAA action” by Natasha Chen and Dakin Andone. The NCAA released a statement in response to Natasha Chen and Dakin Andone’s article, saying the NCAA acknowledged the “urgency and magnitude” of “mental health crisis in this country.”
A least five NCAA athletes have committed suicide this year, wrote The Washington Post’s Molly Hensley-Clancy in “Reeling from suicides, college athletes press NCAA: ‘This is a crisis.”
According to The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), 30% of all female college athletes and 25% of male college athletes report mental health problems, but 10% only of them seek professional help.
To help its athletes with their overall wellness, Bellarmine offers several options to support athletes and their mental health including:
- Bellarmine Counseling Center
- Bellarmine Athletics’ training room (Brad Bluestone, bbluestone@bellarmine.edu)
- Jami Notaro, a counselor who focuses on athletes (jnotaro@bellarmine.edu)
- BU Athletics nutritionist (bbluestone@bellarmine.edu)
- Academic help in the Student Success Center or student athlete advisers (Andrew Schroeder @ashroeder@bellarmine.edu and Natalie Cousins @ncousins@bellarmine.edu)
Notaro is a counselor in the Bellarmine Counseling Center and works with 20% of Bellarmine athletes. She said that the best way to get help is to visit, call or email the Counseling Center https://www.bellarmine.edu/studentaffairs/counselingcenter/.
Natoro said college athletes have the unique approach of understanding their bodies. “When you tie emotion and understanding of the body, it flips a great switch in an athlete,” she said. “Being proactive is better than reactive.”
Bellarmine Athletics also offers “a nutritionist and are working toward a social worker through Norton, along with a team of counselors and athletic trainers,” Natoro said.
Norton Health has partnered with Bellarmine and Bellarmine Athletics to give athletes the care they need. Dr. Ann Jirkovsky, professor of psychology at Bellarmine, said Norton “understands their duties to provide student-athletes with the best resources for both injuries but also mental health…and are working toward eliminating the gap between help for students and help for athletes.”
Jirkovsky teaches about the importance of mental health for college students and college students who are athletes in her sports psychology course at Bellarmine. She said she believes that college counseling centers exist to help all students.
“College campuses have a counselor center for a reason, for the general college student population dealing with mental health issues, but then you put on top of that the college athlete and the pressure to perform,” she said. “We’re seeing more and more student-athletes trying to normalize it because it is normalized for the general college student population.”
Mack has struggled not only with eating disorders but with depression and PTSD that stemmed from those disorders. She is now cleared for competition and has rejoined the cross country and track and field programs at Bellarmine. Though her journey has not been an easy one, she said she has created several relationships with her teammates and is honored to run with her team and her healthy body.
“I am beyond grateful for the body that I have, the body that never gave up on me when I did everything to destroy it,” Mack said.
Mack said she is proud of her story and continues to offer her support to other Bellarmine athletes. “In my journey to recovery, I had to learn to give myself grace,” Mack said. “It is okay to be struggling, and if you need help, please reach out and seek help because you do not have to do this alone.”
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