This past year there have been many instances of high-profile athletes opening up with their struggles with mental health. With Naomi Osaka and her decision to take a break from tennis and Michael Phelps talking about his depression, it has led to an open discussion of mental health and athletes.
Two-time Olympian cross-country skier and professional counselor, Holly Brooks, spoke to high schoolers in Anchorage, Alaska about eating disorders. Brooks told the students,
“In my world, I look at these things as the killer of dreams, I know teammates, friends and clients who developed really bad habits with their bodies and eating habits. I guarantee if this doesn’t feel personal to you, it affects somebody that you’re close to. One in 10 Americans will be affected by an eating disorder.”
Brooks is opening up the conversation to address athletes and eating disorders even though this is not just a problem for high-profile athletes. According to The Sport Journal they found a great range of statistics of the prevalence of eating disorders with female athletes. They state,
“Eating disorders varied greatly, from 1.1% to 49.2% across studies. For instance, Greenleaf found that, in a group of female collegiate athletes, 2% met the criteria for an eating disorder diagnosis and another 25.5% exhibited subclinical symptoms of an eating disorder (e.g., binge eating, self-induced vomiting, and excessive dieting). Similarly, in Petrie study, 19.2% of collegiate athletes reported maladaptive eating behaviors.”
The NCAA has made a statement on this issue because the conversation about eating disorders and female collegiate athletes is opening up. The NCAA gives reasons of why there is a prevalence of eating disorders mostly in female athletes. They state,
“This emphasis on reducing body weight/fat to enhance sport performance can result in weight pressures on the student-athlete from coaches (or even teammates) that increase the risk of restrictive dieting, as well as the use of pathogenic weight loss methods and disordered eating. Even the student-athlete’s perception that her coach thinks she needs to lose weight can heighten weight pressures and increase the risk of disordered eating.”
Without these talks from high-profile athletes the issues within mental health and athletes would not be addressed. The high-profile athletes are leading the way establish change into institutions, who most likely wouldn’t address them if they the issues weren’t addressed by the media first. With more conversations about mental health and athletes they could reform the way we see sports.
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