Some studies have questioned the relevance of mental health for college athletes, but one USC psychologist believes that the destigmatization of mental health is allowing more college athletes to open up about their struggles.
Dylan Firsick, a USC clinical and sports psychologist has seen a rise in college athletes seeking mental health resources.
“We see an influx, but also it’s because people are more willing to maybe see truth,” Firsick said. “More and more athletes know about us and our services and want to come in and work with us.”
In 2013, Chief Medical Director for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Brian Hainline noticed a lack of attention given to college athletes who suffered from mental health than from physical injuries or concussions. As a result, Hainline developed guidelines for schools to follow, prompting the NCAA to heavily investigate further in this and help come up with additional solutions to provide services to student-athletes.
“Student-athlete mental health is an under-recognized health issue, and if managed improperly, leads to poor performance in sport and the classroom, and can potentially lead to life-threatening emergencies,” Hainline said in an interview with an NCAA reporter.
His efforts with the NCAA resulted in a shift toward educating coaches, administration and athletes about mental health. Their Sports Science Institute published a guide in 2016 called Mental Health Best Practices designed to create general support for the mental wellbeing and provide health screenings.
At USC there are 678 student-athletes, according to College Factual. Former Trojan diver, Haley Ishimatsu, Ishimatsu was open to discuss her mental health issues during her time at university.
She was officially diagnosed with major depression when she first went to Duke University in 2010.
She said she started noticing changes as she transitioned from being homeschooled to attending a school far from home.
“I started shutting down. I couldn’t focus on any schoolwork,” she said. “I felt from a very young age that I had a lot of expectations on me where I felt I had to be perfect all the time and I had to be the best.”
Ishimatsu said it was at USC where she found a psychiatrist who helped her understand her depression.
“It’s not the typical what you think of when you go to a psychiatrist,” Ishimatsu said. “What she did is she gave me tools to recognize what we call catastrophic thinking … that really helped me break everything down into smaller bits that I could easily deal with.
USC employs four full-time sports psychologists in which therapy sessions are available on an individual basis or in a group setting.