Mental Health and Sport - Supporting Young Athletes - 'A conversation with Richard Elliott'

In this episode Associate Dean at University Campus of Football Business(UCFB) and author Dr. Richard Elliott joins Gordon MacLelland to discuss 'Supporting Mental Health in Young Athletes' and what that potentially means for us as sporting parents.

During the conversation they discuss amongst other things:

• Mental health operating on a continuum, much like physical health
• Establishing a distinction between everyday struggles ("bad days") and long-term mental health issues
• The importance of parents aligning their expectations with their child's motivations for playing sport
• The unpredictability of elite sport meaning that effort doesn’t always lead to success
• Recognising that adolescents go through significant neurobiological changes, making them more prone to mood swings, anxiety, and emotional extremes
• The importance of talking and normalising conversations about feelings and mental health
• Helping our sporting children develop coping mechanisms for setbacks, just as they would for physical injuries
• Being an emotional anchor as a parent, not just a second coach or critic

Richard Elliott is Associate Dean at University Campus of Football Business (UCFB). He has spent more than twenty years researching the lived experiences of elite athletes and the environments in which they work. He is the co-editor of Football and Migration: Perspectives, places, players (Routledge, 2014), editor of The English Premier League: A socio-cultural analysis (Routledge, 2017), and author of Mental Health and Sport: Supporting Elite Athletes (Routledge, 2024). An advocate for mental health literacy, Richard has developed a number of successful education programmes designed to support the mental and emotional wellbeing of elite athletes.

To find out more about the topic you can buy Richard's book here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mental-Health-Sport-Supporting-Athletes/dp/1032395702/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Additional Reading

Self-Compassion - helping our children understand the importance of it

Transcript

Speaker 0:12

Welcome to season six of the Parents in Sport Podcast. I am your host, Gordon Maclelland. I'm delighted to be joined today by author and academic Dr. Richard Elliott. Richard, thank you for joining us on the show. It's a pleasure to be here, Gordon. Thanks for having me. Now, before we get underway to talk about such a key topic in the world of sport today around mental health, Richard, could you just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background and your current work?

Speaker 1 0:42

Yeah, so um, I mean, I I started off life um as an athlete, I guess. I was a I was a basketball player, um playing at a pretty decent level. Uh, but you know, like a lot of stories in in sort of elite sport, um my um aspirations to build a career came to a fairly abrupt end. Um I think there were two things. One, I had a really, really bad injury. Um I also don't think I was good enough to build a career in the sport. The problem I had is that I'd always been an athlete um of one type or another, um, and all of a sudden I wasn't. And you know, what was uh what was I gonna do? I reinvented myself as a as an academic. That's what I did. You know, I'd I'd sort of forgot my education um whilst involved in my sport, um, and I had to refine that. Um, and I did over many years. Uh and when I um ultimately arrived at Loughborough University, which is where I did my PhD, that's when I was able to sort of meld the two elements of my new life together, the academic element and my previous life as a um as an athlete. And that's where I became really interested in trying to make sense of the lived experiences of elite athletes across a range of different sports. And I've effectively spent the last 20 years um predominantly exploring the environments in which in which elite athletes work and trying to identify the ways in which those environments actually create the conditions for the development of mental health problems. And what that's done is that's meant that I've um had the opportunity to speak to many, many athletes over the course of the last 20 years across a broad range of different sports, um, and to talk about their lived experiences and their stories, and you know, they've really opened up to me. And then more recently, then I've spent quite a lot of time speaking with and working with practitioners who are trying as best they can to support the the mental and emotional um health of the athletes with whom they work, but often don't have the tools to be able to do that effectively.

Speaker 2:46

Brilliant, and such an important topic. And I think as we dig deep today, obviously for lots of our audience, many of whom are practitioners, but actually also parents as well. You know, if practitioners are struggling with some of the skills, we've got we've got parents who certainly will be um struggling uh when they see things uh with their young people. Uh and you've written a new book, which was the reason that I was desperate to get you on the show, mental health and sport supporting elite athletes. Um, what were your motivations for writing it? Uh what did you what did you find? Tell us a little bit more about it.

Speaker 1 3:25

Well, interestingly, when I sort of came into this space 20 odd years ago, mental health wasn't really talked about to any great length or in any great detail, um, particularly in elite sports settings. And that's still a you know an issue today, there's still a culture of silence to a certain extent. Um so uh I was yeah, I was really kind of interested in in talking about the experiences of others that I had been um provided an opportunity to learn about over the course of those of those last 20 years. Because the thing that I found is that athletes wouldn't open up to people within their clubs or their organizations, there's just too great a risk to do that, and that's something that I talk about at length in the in the book. Um, but they would open up to somebody who was independent, impartial, like me. And obviously, all the conversations that we had were confidential. I make no reference to any athlete within the book, and and I would never divulge um any information that's provided to me in regard to any athlete that I've spoken to unless they specifically wanted me to do so. And there's only ever been one athlete who's who's actually done that. So I'd spent this time working with these athletes, and there was a you know a huge amount that was beginning to develop in regards to this concept of mental health in elite sport and the challenges that it presented. And and and I thought to myself, well, you know, there's a huge amount of information I've got here. I've spoken to a lot of athletes, increasingly, I'm speaking to a lot of practitioners, but that there are a lot of challenges, there are a lot of issues. So, how do we provide a baseline here if you want this? You know, this is not a complicated book. This is not this this is I've I've written this book, I haven't written it for just a group of other academics to read to make ourselves all feel very clever. I've written it predominantly for practitioners. I want practitioners to be able to pick it up and say, oh, yeah, there's something of value in it. Yeah, there may be some things that are not relevant to them in in their particular practice, but I hope there is something that's relevant for everyone somewhere within the book, within their practice. So, what I've done is I've I've provided a sort of a foundational understanding of what mental health actually is. Because I think that's the that's the starting point, and often the conversations that I have, particularly with practitioners, but also with parents, is that they just don't understand, you know, they hear it, we hear it all the time, right? The the term is out there all the time. But the reality is that a lot of people don't understand what mental health is and how to support it. Um, they also don't understand, particularly in elite sports environments, the complexity of the environment and how elite sports environments are very specific places that present very specific challenges for the individuals who work within them. There's also a chapter that focuses on transition, which is tremendously important in the context of youth sport because the transitions that are made between age groups, uh youth to senior, but also those that occur if players injured or deselected. Um, that's tremendously important as well. Um, and then I focus on specific sorts of athletes. Whilst the book has an overarching frame that that um supports the support of male elite athletes, I then focus on some specific groups who often get overlooked. So youth athletes as one group, uh, foreign athletes who are playing in a foreign country, and also female athletes because of the rapid professionalization that's occurring within women's sport at the moment.

Speaker 6:48

Fantastic. I mean, as I say, I'm looking forward to digging a bit deeper into this. One thing you touched on there is I guess trying to define uh mental health. Um, I think out on the ground, we see it banded around a lot. I think the challenge we've got, perhaps out there, is when certain things happen within young people's experiences, and then in order sometimes to maybe get a reaction, change, and outcome, the term it's damaged my child's mental health is banded around, which presents uh I think a challenge for all of us, um, in terms of making sense of it. So, can you try and define for us what it actually is and when we should actually be using that phrase, I guess.

Speaker 1 7:39

Yeah, I mean, the the first thing I'd say before I answer that is look, it rightly or wrongly, people don't understand what mental health is. But rightly, we talk about mental health a lot more now, and I think that's tremendously important.

Speaker 7:54

That's a positive for everybody. You want people talking, yeah.

Speaker 1 7:57

Absolutely. And and and the more that we can normalize conversations around mental health, the better. And you know, it's I'm a big advocate for kind of for normalizing that because if if you want, in terms of trying the the issues that we've got in regards to mental health, I mean, with with physical health, if uh if a if an athlete is injured, physically, physiologically, usually that's relatively easy to you. You can see it, you can diagnose it, you can treat it, and so on. But mental health is is a lot trickier. Um, it's a lot more difficult to see, and particularly in elite sports environments where, as I say, there is this almost sort of culture of silence. So athletes um become what I refer to as sort of skilled manipulators of their workplace selves. So they they they effectively hide any sort of uh mental issue that they might be facing because they fear the consequences of revealing that and what that might mean in terms of the NX contract or the way in which they be viewed by coaches or marriages or or so on. However, you're right in that there is an issue that that in for some individuals in some environments, it's really easy just to say you don't do X because it will have an effect on the mental health of my child or this athlete or so on, or it's having an effect on my mental health. And it may well have an effect on someone's mental health because mental health exists on a continuum. Yeah, mental health is in some ways no different to physical health. You know, we we all have physical health. Sometimes we're healthy, sometimes we're not healthy, but we can get healthy again with the right care. Mental health operates in the same sort of way. So, you know, we we hope to have good mental health, but there are certain things which will affect our mental health and which will mean that we at one point in time don't have such great mental health, but that doesn't mean we can't recover. I think the key point is when we cross that sort of boundary from you know, um uh into like a mental health issue or a mental health problem. So when something becomes prolonged, when it starts to have a significant impact on our daily life, things such as that. That is where the issues arise. But that is often what people struggle to define. There is a difference between what can be referred to, and you know, excuse my language here, but this is a term that gets that gets used regularly. There's a difference between shit day syndrome, which we all suffer from, we all have bad days, and a mental health problem. And it's crucial that I think people understand how mental health operates in a continuum, but also how the continuum exists in such a way that an individual can develop a mental health problem and how to recognise that and then how to treat it effectively.

Speaker 10:43

Brilliant. I I think that's um that sums it up beautifully for me. Uh, and as I say, I think some of the challenges with you know young performers and their parents around the using of it is you know, a bit like you've saying there, you know, a bad performance, perhaps deselection, um, maybe injury setbacks. Um, and not that it's a good time for anybody, a lot of these things. It it certainly isn't. Um, but there is definitely more of a use of where you didn't do enough to support their mental health. Now that's on all of us to improve our environments, our support. I'm a big fan of what we've taught about getting parents to get their kids talking about their sport very openly from a young age and being authentic and being themselves. Um, and we and we've got to do that. Um, but I do think that's a really positive way of separating the two. For for sports parents, um what do you think we can do proactively as our young people? And I spend a lot of time in, I'm not going to call them elite, high-performing youth environments, because that's what they are. Um, what can we be doing to positively support the mental health of our young people as they go through those journeys? Because they are different, as you've already alluded to, to people who aren't involved in those and are just living a normal life, not in that type of environment.

Speaker 1 12:19

Yeah, I mean, you you you've already touched on something that's so so important, and that's this concept of authenticity. Um and talk, you know, which which is which is really difficult. One of the one of the things that we find in elite sports environments, as I say, is that people don't talk very openly. I mean, there is a generational shift here that we're seeing, I should say. So young people now are far better at talking about their mental health and their mental health and their feelings. Absolutely, yeah, far better than than um my generation, and certainly way better than my my parents' generation. So we do see a generational shift, and that's really good. What we're not seeing is is that the shift in elite sport isn't occurring in at quite the same rate as perhaps uh certainly I would like to see it occur. Um, and there are still some environmental issues that occur in regards to the ability to be able to speak up and speak out about mental health issues. This is why you often find that when athletes reveal that they've had some form of mental health difficulty, they tend to do it after they've retired. Um, not all. I mean, there have been some you know high-profile cases of athletes who have come out, but again, those athletes tend to be at the top of their game and can therefore ride out the sort of challenges or the criticisms that that they might face um thereafter. Um but beyond that, which is absolutely crucial, I think if if we look at the if we look at the research which is being conducted in regards to um parenting and specifically the parenting of elite athletes, um, although I would argue that this this covers parenting in any environment, not just sport, academics, whatever beyond, what the research shows overwhelmingly is that emotionally supportive parents are more likely to encourage their child to, in this case, athletic success, relative to those parents who apply excessive pressure to their child to achieve. And I think this is you know, this is a big challenge, obviously, certainly in elite sports settings where parents often place a significant amount of burden on the shoulders of a child. And I've I've having spoken to um lots of practitioners, some of the examples that they've given me of parental behaviour and the kind of pressure that's placed upon their um their young person is not going to support them to necessarily to a good outcome, either in terms of their athletic prowess or their or their mental health. I think the other thing that's tremendously important as well, and and and I talk about this for youth athletes, but for all athletes as well, is the importance of taking a dual career approach. Um, so you know, young people should be encouraged to focus on both their athletic and their educational development and not just their education, other things as well, other sports, other activities, um, gaining access to other social groups and so on. And of course, that comes back to um extending their identity. Um and also, of course, in the context of certainly of athletic and academic performance, parents should keep a really close eye on their child to ensure they're successfully balancing the demands of training and competition alongside studying as well. You know, we we know that that, and I and I've experienced this first hand. You you you you you place all your eggs in one basket, you believe you're gonna get a particular outcome in in the athletic world, and then you don't, and you know, you've always been an athlete, you're an athlete, you're an athlete, all of a sudden something happens and you're not an athlete. Well, what are you? If you don't have any sort of identity continuation, if you don't have anything to fall back on, that can create a significant problem.

Speaker 16:12

Yeah, I think I think I'm gonna, you know, I think that's a really good point you've made there. We talk a lot about our sessions about I'm never negative, Richard, never being negative. Love young people who want to aspire. So I would never say you've got to have a plan B. You've used dual career, I use with the younger ones. We want multifaceted kids, kids with different, different strings to their bow and breaks, uh, and breaks in the year, doing other things, opportunities, other social groups, all the other stuff that that we know is really healthy. I think the challenge for parents, I think there's an education piece, but I also think it goes beyond that. It's got two things. We've got this idea that we think to make it, we have got to be absolutely all in 100% of the time. Now, we do have to be all in to some extent because you you've got to put in time to be good, but that doesn't mean 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. And I think that's the challenge. And I think they assume that the more you do, the better you get. And then we all disappear into the sunset and the world's a happy place. But again, that only goes to a point, doesn't it? Before we start then seeing the negative side of that, where we come down the other side and there's effects on performance in a number of ways because of the conditions that we've created. I suppose the sympathy for all of us as parents is that we know we provide the vast majority of the emotional support, which you do, particularly with the youngest performers. You know, nobody sees when you're having to motivate your kids those days where they're not, where they're having that shit, as you're saying you've got to get them to go out to chatting, or they've struggled with some form of disappointment, or the realities of the world, you know, haven't panned out. And parents are providing that. I think on the other side of that, though, I think the pressures and challenges for parents around performance sport is just that sheer idea of the commitment, the time, the cost, the logistics, everything that goes with it. And then by the nature of it, I think then you're expecting a return on your investment. The challenge we've got is that children aren't commodities and they're human beings, and it's not like play in the stock market. I think the other challenge we've got is that in the world of sport, you can be all in, you can do all of those things, but we have got no guaranteed return on that investment. And having worked in a couple of Olympic programs recently, where some young people gave absolutely everything over the last decade, um, couldn't have done any more, couldn't have done more than the parents asked, coaches asked, did all the extra, and still didn't achieve what they wanted to achieve. I've been doing a lot of work with parents saying we've got to use best chance with these kids. Sessions I taught to the kids in because it's best chance. We're gonna do everything we can to give ourselves the best chance because we can do everything and they still may not get where we want to get to. I think it's one of the only things in the world where that can apply. There's lots of other things uh we can control, but I do think that presents all of that, and making sense of that certainly presents challenges for parents, I think.

Speaker 1 19:35

Yeah, and I and I would entirely agree. Um the as you say, this is it's a very unusual world elite sport. Uh you can give absolutely um everything. Um we would sometimes see this with a youth um youth to senior transition, for example. You've been a stellar youth player, you move into senior, all of a sudden you're working with new coaches and new management team who just for one reason or another do not rate you in the same way that your junior coaches did, and therefore, for no reason of your own, you then find yourself deselected. And you how many times have we seen it across various different sports? You know, the next great thing, the next great thing, and you see these athletes come a come along, and then you we refer to them typically, um, certainly in American sports, they get referred to as busts. So, you know, this this player or that player was going to be the next biggest thing, but they're the the biggest bust this year because they just something happened, they just didn't manage to make that step to senior level competition. You sometimes you just don't know why that's the case. There are external forces, but that's kind of part of this, you know, and you've alluded to it. That the roller coaster ride, if you want, that is elite sport. The the ups, the highs can be tremendously high, the lows can be tremendously low. There's there's no linear path to success in elite sport.

Speaker 20:56

No, absolutely not. And I would I was actually having this chat with my own children yesterday. We were talking about this, and they asked me about what my memories of of going from junior to senior sport was like, and I'm probably like you, it just didn't quite work out and did quite well to a high level in the youth space, but then actually, probably in hindsight wasn't good enough. Um, but I'll never forget that first training session playing adult sport, I'll never forget it. Got absolutely hit, and I mean really hard, Richard playing rugby by a massive 35-year-old uh prop on Merseyside. And I'll never forget him saying, if you think you're coming in here and taking my uh kid's mortgage money off me, you've got another thing coming. And I'll never forget it, it stuck with me forever. And I actually like the guy, there's no there's no issue there at all. But then the realities of the world also set in. Everybody thinks the big jumps are as you're going through age groups and you go from sixteens to 18s, and yet in a lot of sports, you could argue the biggest jump is the final one. You know, you've alluded to it, world junior track champions who can't transition in. But what I was coming back to, and I said this yesterday to my kids who've had some amazing youth experiences and are going through. But actually, when you're 18 and you go out into the adult world, and we're talking, let's say, performance sport, I'm not sure anybody gives a stuff what you've done in your first 18 years. Now, I don't mean that flippantly, but on that given day, if you turned up somewhere and it is about winning or achieving an outcome, they are going to pick the person who they think on that given day is going to give them the best chance of achieving the outcome they're trying to achieve. And it's irrelevant of it's irrelevant of background. It's what you find in your environment, isn't it? And that's what you're saying about those coaches there, that you go in and actually the coach is looking round and they're saying, right, how am I going to get the best result I can this Saturday? Because that's the most important thing. And actually, you don't quite fit for whatever reason, I'm going to go with something that I know is more reliable and I can rely on.

Speaker 1 23:08

No, that's right. And I'm a lot of the work that's done in football, we see this all the time in terms of the culture of the club, and often it depends on the league that the club is in as well. So, for example, if you've got very deep pockets, the opportunity, the culture typically in the club, is you buy ready-made professionals. So, unless you are an exceptional, the the likelihood is that has a manager got time to blood an 18-year-old player in the first team, um, you know, they may try, but ultimately they'll likely go in and buy a ready-made international um who can deliver on the ground straight away. However, if you're a League One, League Two club and you don't have the capacity to do that, and you rely on your youth development system to produce a pipeline of talent players that you're going to use, then it's a very different system. So, and different sports operate in different ways. You know, some have really clearly defined pathways through to senior competitions, some do not. Some offer really strong mentoring schemes to uh where senior pros will mentor the junior players as they as they come through, others don't. It's entirely dependent on a range of again different external factors.

Speaker 24:18

Yeah, absolutely. Going back to the parents piece, um, we've talked a little bit about things we can, you know, positively do to support. We've got to be emotionally there. What are some of the dangers or traps that some of the traps, let's say, that parents may fall into when supporting their young people? But also around, I guess, mental health, what are some of the warning signs? I think for us as parents, we we need to be able to spot those. We need to be more self-aware about the topic more than anything else. So, what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 1 24:53

Well, I mean, I think if we if we go right back to basics, I think one of the first things that that that can have a negative effect on um a child's experience of sport and ultimately their mental health is failing to establish if that child is psychologically and cognitively ready to participate in sport at all. Yeah. We've all seen those cases of the parents living their lives, sporting lives vicariously through their through their child. Um, the problem is that if there's a mismatch in sport readiness and then particularly skill development, so you know the young person doesn't possess the skills to perhaps play a particular sport at a particular level at a particular time, then that can lead to stress and anxiety. Um, and that can ultimately result in in quite a lot of children withdrawing from sport at an early age. And withdrawal is a is a kind of a red flag, if you want. So if a young person is reluctant to do something, if they show fear, if they withdraw, then these are the sorts of things that that you're rather than pushing a child harder, these are the sorts of things that you should see to sort of ask questions of and have conversations with. Um from a parent's perspective, though, as well, sometimes there can be a mismatch between the child's motivation to engage in sport and the parents. So if we look at the research, for example, what a lot of the research tells us is that most children become involved in sport because they want to have fun. Um, but parents, on the other hand, they believe that their child is more likely to go to engage in sport because they want to win. Um, and when when a disconnect like that occurs, it can it can contribute to um to stress and unhappiness for young athletes. Um, and and the primary reason is because it can lead those adults who are controlling sport at youth level to effectively believe that winning overrides all those other important fundamental elements like fairness and participation and skills development. And of course, that can be a particular problem at grassroots level because it's often parents who are central in facilitating children's early experiences in sport. So again, you know, we we kind of see the this these levels of withdrawal where young people don't want to be involved in sport, but we also see parents who you know continue to push them if you if you want. The other the other challenge, of course, with that is where a child perhaps does demonstrate some some sort of aptitude for a particular sport, some parents then and coaches can encourage a child to specialise too early. So we're back to this kind of idea of identity formation and building a more complex identity around a number of different entities. Um, but if you if a child specializes in one sport too early, then of course, naturally, then they fail to sample other sports and other activities. Um, if they're going to singularly try to pursue a career, I say that in inverted commas, in one particular sport. Um, as I say, if they do that, the opportunity to develop a more diverse athletic identity becomes narrow. And then we see the risk of burnout. So we type we tend to sort of like in terms of the red flags, things, things you might see there, in terms of physical things, you know, a child who's who's quick to anger, um, frustrated, struggles to sleep, isn't eating ordinarily, some cases even picks up additional injuries, things such as that. These are things that sometimes can be missed in different ways. But I think typically the person who knows the child best is the parent. And therefore, any change in behavior that doesn't appear to be normal for that child in that environment at that time, that should be something that a parent's picking up on and having a conversation with. But to go back to what you said before, if we're having conversations with our young people, if we're talking more openly, hopefully it gives us more of an opportunity to spot these things because they may actually reveal them and talk about them to us.

Speaker 28:52

Brilliant. Uh, fantastic. I'm gonna jump on a few things, Richard. Right. Parents who've seen us live, they know one of the big things we get you to go and do. Ask kids why they're doing their sport at that point in time, ask them what's motivating them at the moment. You may see very different answers uh as time goes on at age and stage, but actually, it's a really good check-in question because we need to be aligned the best we can to why they're doing their sport at that point in time and not why we think they're doing it. And Richard's jumped onto that. For many of us who've been institutionalized by sport, and I put myself up there as one of those parents, my idea of competition and winning probably is far higher than my kids. What I'm not prepared to do, however, is tell everybody that they should see sport in a certain way, because I also know for some individual young people that is really high as well. Um, for whatever reason it can be. So we've got to treat this as a very much understanding your child, which lots of obviously, as Richard said, sports parents do. We know them better than anybody else in terms of uh changes of behaviour, things we may spot. I think also this whole thing around push, pull, pressure, expectation management, all of the things that come with it, again, what may be pressure for one child may actually be encouragement for another. And this is where we've got to get more cute with our support. Everybody wants the black and white answer, everybody wants the magic solution across this spectrum. But actually, it comes down to, for all of us, coaches and parents, how well do you know the person that you're working with? Because then when you understand that, you are more likely to be able to spot these, you'll be able to see where they actually are on this continuum and where those danger signs may be. But we've got to do that, we've got to do it with them, we've got to get them talking about it and create our own picture and our own narrative.

Speaker 1 31:01

Yeah, absolutely. And the and the other thing I'd say as well, because often we we we place the focus on the child and we talk about the child and the child's mental health, but we also have to take into consideration the parents' mental health as well. And you alluded to it earlier, Gordon, that that parents are under a significant amount of pressure here as well, particularly as their child, if their child's identified as a talented athlete, as they begin to move through a performance pathway, as the potential reality of a career in elite sport becomes more realistic, thus this is a changing journey. So it's not a linear journey, but the the pressures change all the time. And I think, and you talked about these a little bit earlier, there are a number of specific stresses to which parents can be exposed during their child's athletic development. So, for example, you know, we talked about uncertainty in respect of retention, uh, the quality of communication with coaching staff, unfamiliar coaching practices, um, and the management of training and education demands, all of that on top of the logistical demands of getting a child to particular training centres at particular times, the costs associated with sport, which vary, all of these sorts of things, which I think a lot of parents that I've spoken to often believe that sometimes the the coaches and the sports organizations they're working with don't take into consideration.

Speaker 32:19

So we've got to and we've got to bridge that gap, Richard. We're doing that with the coach ed side. I think there's things we can do there about painting better pictures of what these journeys potentially look like, acknowledging the role that parents are playing within that and actually providing some more information and support than we actually do because it's really tough out there. You know, we with sports backgrounds, you've got a bit of a chance. I've got thousands of parents who I talk to who never really did sport. Some don't even know about the sport their children are even in, they don't have a clue about it, and they'll acknowledge that and say that. But actually, how do we help support them as the primary caregiver in many cases? It's important.

Speaker 1 33:07

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree.

Speaker 33:11

Now, you've spoken with lots of practitioners about, you know, recently about how we support mental health. Um what did they say to you? What are they finding? What do they find challenging? What have people tried that that have worked well? How are they, you know, what environments are they trying to create around performers? What are what have you learned?

Speaker 1 33:36

I I think from the practitioners that I've spoken to, um, there's often a sense of frustration. I think that's probably the overriding sense. I mean, more information, more education is becoming available now in regards to mental health, but they often don't possess a lot of the basic tools. So you know, I'll go right back to what I said because one of the reasons why I wrote this book because I've had so many conversations with practitioners where I'm I'm sort of breaking things down to basics, hoping I'm not teaching people how to suck eggs, and then people are coming up to me at the end of courses and saying that was remarkable. I never realized that, I didn't know this. I'm thinking, wow, you know, so we really need to strip this back to basics so that people understand what mental health is before we even start to think about how we how we might um support it. Um I think in terms of the issues that uh repeatedly um emerge when I'm having conversations with practitioners, uh, there's a lot around sort of parental pressure and interference, uh, particularly the coaches, because I spend quite a lot of time, not necessarily always because I think one point I should make here, I've not made this point yet, is that when I talk about practitioners, I'm not talking about somebody who specifically has a role in supporting the mental health of athletes in a particular environment. I believe that mental health is everybody's responsibility. So I talk to coaches and academy directors and parents and athletes themselves and psychologists and physios, also because all of these people can contribute to the support of the mental health. And and the thing, certainly, when I speak to coaches, they still believe that there's quite a significant issue in regards to parental pressure and interference, particularly one-on-one coaches. So if you've got if you've got uh, for example, uh an elite tennis player, and then so something such as that, often you can find that in some cases the parent has coached, these are sort of the worst cases where the parent has coached the child to a certain point, but they've now reached the the peak of their ability and therefore need that that child to be taken on and under the wing of a professional coach, then it's very difficult to separate yourself, coach, parent, and supporter. You know that there's issues around that. Um in some sports as well, particularly in in team sports, and particularly I will say within within football, some of the biggest issues are around this belief that that young players have somehow in inverted commas made it um way before they actually have them, and when you know, without any realistic possibility that they might actually make it. And that can create additional issues around identity and certainly can make deselection a far more difficult prospect than those athletes who do take those dual career approaches uh approaches as well, and then generally just not being prepared for certainly parents not being prepared for their child being deselected as well. Um, and we know that elite sport works in a pyramidal format, right? So you know far more young people come in at the bottom than will actually build lasting careers at the at the top. Some of the statistics aren't always helpful or entirely accurate in terms of the numbers that do. But that said, we still know far fewer will make it, but um a lot of the uh a lot of the practitioners that I speak to still have to have obviously very difficult conversations with parents, and it's what what you do thereafter then to support an athlete who's been deselected. And that's a that's a grey area because a lot of clubs will sort of say, Well, you know, we why do we need to support the child thereafter? Because you know, we've met our obligations to them over a certain number of years and we'll do a certain amount, but other clubs will say, Well, actually, this player transferred into us for a couple of years towards the you know the end of their development. We haven't had them through the whole of their development, so why should we now be responsible for supporting them thereafter? So it yeah, it's it's it's a grey area, but often the challenge, as I say, that I find is that the the individuals who find themselves supporting mental health are often doing it as a subsidiary role of something else. So they might be a safeguarding officer, but you know, they've they've also been sent on a mental health course and told to be the lead for mental health. Interesting psychologists often assume this the role within clubs and organizations, but interestingly, the players that I've spoken to, uh both junior players and senior players and retired players as well, often the psychologist is the last person they want to speak to because they believe that if they speak to the psychologist, the psychologist then goes and speaks to the coach, and then we're back to that cycle of uh the implications that could have for uh selection for contracts, and therefore that supports the culture of silence. Um, so yeah, there are there are all sorts of issues. I don't think anybody's worked out in any sport yet um a clearly defined solution for the way in which we best support the mental health of athletes. But yeah, there are various things that we you know that we can do, but it's up to the individual sports to then operationalise those as effectively as they can.

Speaker 38:48

Yeah, and I think that point you made earlier that everybody's responsible. You know, I keep looking at our work, and it seems to be coming a sort of more repeated statement now that we're all in this together. These challenges we're talking about today, these things that are a normal part of being involved, these challenges where coaches have kept parents at arm's length because for them it's better for them not to be interfered with, but then they've been tarnished in the past by the late-night email full of Sovignon Blanc telling them that they're the worst people ever to be involved in sport by parents and all this. So, well, hang on, you know, we've all got ourselves in this mess. We've all got to get ourselves out of it, and that's everybody's role in supporting each other. But being real for me, I think being really good with our relationships and what it what it actually looks like, being far more honest and talking like we are about the the implications of youth sport and elite sport, because it's different, it is different to the normal world.

Speaker 1 39:51

Yeah, absolutely. And I've talked repeatedly and I do the book about normalizing conversations around mental health. The the other thing, the other thing I do as well, and particularly for practitioners working within elite sports environments, is the significance of the MDT, the multidisciplinary team. So naturally, young young athletes will have a a number of different touch points throughout their week, throughout their season, throughout their career. And it's really important that the those touch points work cohesively to support, well, before we even get to support, they work cohesively to be able to identify potential mental health problems in young people and then to support them. And I should say as well, it is more difficult to spot mental health problems in young people, particularly adolescents, than it is in adults. Um, and and that is because of what is going on in these young people's brains during the adolescent period.

Speaker 40:51

Yeah, I was I was about to jump in earlier actually when you started talking about this, because I was gonna say, actually, yeah, and also for teenage parents who I spend a lot of time with, we've then got the added difficulty, like you've said, is when you go from being the person who knew everything to the person who knows absolutely nothing, which I'm currently loving going through at the moment, or you've got a child who doesn't overly want to listen to what you've got to say, maybe who's withdrawing a little bit more, spending more time slightly isolated. It may be a mental health issue, however, it may not. You may just have a teenager. We've we've got to be aware, we've got to be aware of that, haven't we? Just to just to complicate it a little bit more in those years, Richard. I think.

Speaker 1 41:33

I I I think I think this is the single most important factor for me in the context of of mental health for young people, particularly adolescents. Um, and when I when I did my mental health training, um this was the thing that stood out for me more than anything else. And when I speak to parents, this is the thing that they will often get on the phone. I've I've had I've had um individuals who work at Leedsburg who have actually got on the phone to their own wife or their own husband shortly after the session I've done on neurobiological changes and said, I suddenly realize why our son, daughter, or son and daughter you know act in the way they do. I'm a parent, I have two teenage children, 16-year-old daughter, 13-year-old son. Um, and it understanding the neurobiological changes that uh that occur in the adolescent brain completely changed the way in which I parent them.

Speaker 42:29

Um it's huge, isn't it? It's a self-awareness thing. I mean, Sarah Murray delivers on our uh sessions out in the sports world in the youth, you know, fast cars, pour, break, sports parents in the teenage brain. And it's along with managing disappointment, it's probably this, I would say, just about up there with the most popular sessions we get asked to deliver when parents are given a choice. Please can somebody make me feel a bit better about having a teenager.

Speaker 1 42:55

Yeah, yeah, and and and and you know, we we've all been teenagers, naturally, we've been through this ourselves, but certainly I didn't know what was going on in my own brain, you know, at that point in time. And I think and I I think this is the thing for me. I think whilst it's easy to see the physiological changes that uh that are occurring in in our young people, because you can't see well, you you can't directly see the neurobiological challenges, you know, you you can see the effects of them, but I think the important thing to bear in mind is that the the adolescent brain is different from the child brain and the adult brain, and the changes that occur in the adolescent brain are the most significant neurobiological changes that will occur at any point during the human lifespan. You know, this in this in this few these few years post puberty and and until sort of early 20s, in fact, even some of the research will suggest it can't be the early 30s, in fact. But certainly between sort of like the like the um the the period of puberty up to sort of the late teens, early twenties, the changes that occur. In the human brain are absolutely remarkable. And of course, what these changes mean is that our young people are far more susceptible to extremes of emotion, anxiety, and depression. And I don't know if it's if it's been talked about in other in other sessions, but the reason for that is because the parts of the brain that effectively control emotion develop more quickly than those parts that regulate control. So what that means is it's far, far harder to spot mental health problems because the brain changes that young people experience make them far more susceptible to those extremes of emotion. As an adult, you've been through that process. Therefore, if there's suddenly a very extreme change in emotion, then that's less likely to be connected to brain development. That's more likely to be connected to something else. Um so so I you know ultimately when I've spoken to parents and as a parent myself, one of the things I have to constantly remind myself is just cut them a bit of slack because there is an awful lot going on inside of these young people at this particular point in their um in their lives.

Speaker 45:12

Yeah, I yeah, absolutely. I'd I'm sure there'll be many tails. I always like a good tale. I'm sure there's going to be many more over the next few years as we negotiate this period with with young people in sport. I'm sure I'll be sharing an awful lot of my fails um uh along the journey uh with how difficult that actually is. Now, just conscious of time, uh Richard, we've covered uh quite a lot. I suppose it's a final question, you know, big topic, huge topic. If you've got one bit of advice uh for all the sports parents out there supporting the mental health of their young young people, what would it be? What can we get them just to consider and take away from all of this?

Speaker 1 45:54

Um well, it's it's it's difficult for me because I know what a seminal moment it was when I learned about how the adolescent brain works and how an awful lot of adolescent teenage behaviour can be explained by the neurobiological changes that occur. So that that is one thing, but I think for me, I'd go back to a point that you made um earlier on, and we've talked about throughout this um this session is talk. I think it's the most important. I I I I'm an advocate for mental health literacy, um, but I think we only learn more about mental health by actually talking to one another and talking to our our children, talking to our young people, particularly, because they are of a generation where they are more open to talking about the ways that they feel, their emotions, um, things that are going right, things that might be going wrong. We said earlier, didn't we, that as parents, we know our children, or we hope to know our children better than anybody else. Um, and therefore, yeah, I think just talk as much as possible, normalize, normalize those conversations in regards to mental health. You know, you go out, you fall off your bike, you scrape your knee, you come back, you say, I've hurt my knee, can I have a plaster? You know, you go out, somebody says something awful to you, it makes you feel terrible, come back, say, somebody said this, I feel like this. What's the metaphorical plaster that we can use in the first sense? And do we need something more significant to treat something that uh could become more serious over time?

Speaker 47:31

Brilliant. Richard, absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Uh, we will include uh links to Richard's new book uh and information where you can find out more uh about his work. But for now, uh been an absolute pleasure, Richard, and look forward to maybe having you uh on again uh in the future.

Speaker 1 47:50

Gordon, it's been a pleasure. Thanks very much for having me.

Speaker 47:53

Thank you, bellington.

Speaker 1 47:55

Check it out at well.co.