Supporting Student-Athletes: Mental Health, Collaboration, and Care Strategies - Episode 2

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Transcript

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You're listening to Vital Signs, a podcast for Sentara providers. Welcome to episode 2 of the Supporting the Student Athlete

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Series. In today's episode, we're joined by Tommy Bateman, director of Clinical Practice Management,

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and Vonchell Lewis, licensed clinical social worker.

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Before we turn things over to the team, here are a few important CME announcements.

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This episode is accredited for AMA PRA, Category 1 credits.

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For full accreditation, designation, and disclosure information, please refer to the show notes.

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And now here are Tommy and Vonchell.

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Hello and welcome back to Vital Signs, a podcast for Centera providers. I'm still here with Ronchell Lewis and we're talking about uh

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student-athletes counseling and her role at Hampton University working with the student-athletes.

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And in the second part of our series, we're talking about common mental health challenges. Among student athletes at the end of the last session we were talking about

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we actually compared the male athletics and the female athletics and we kind of saw, hey, wait a minute,

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this doesn't, doesn't, doesn't really have as many gender differences as 1 may assume.

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In fact, athletes have a very specific

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need

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in the counseling chamber. So Rachel, why don't we start talk about that? What are some of these issues you see most often?

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Yeah, some of the main issues, um, that come into my office are, um, anxiety,

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and that anxiety is associated with their performance. It could be the pressure that they have on themselves,

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um, their coaches have on them, or family members have on them. And when they get

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concerned about their performance, um, on the field, it turns up into what we know as anxiety,

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right? They are fearful of what hasn't happened. They're fearful of what's to come,

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um, and then when they are fearful, now that obviously affects their mental health,

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it affects their mental clarity, and now they're potentially more prone to injuries. So it kind of has like a domino effect and and

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continues to, um,

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To play them

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before, during, and even after the season. So that's wild. So a mental health condition affects performance so much that they're,

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they're already doing higher, higher risk behavior to begin with. And so a mental health challenge can lead to real

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Damage on the field. Yeah,

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absolutely, because we see that, you know, anxiety, while most people um think about it in terms of,

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um, like I'm shaking, heart racing and things like that, but we also know that it can have Concerns when it pertains to

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eating, right? And it, um, as it pertains to sleeping, as it pertains to substance misuse.

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So this anxiety that starts off that may be really mild can't actually,

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you know, go really high and beyond. The spectrum that we wanted to go if left untreated.

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Um, and this is, think about it now, right? We think about performance and social media,

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everything is out there. So I have all this anxiety because I want to perform my best and Everything

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is recorded and everything gets posted, right? And just one bad comment can take them into a downward spiral.

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So anxiety related to performance has been the biggest, um, that comes up,

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but we also see that go into,

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am I gonna play this season? Am I gonna play next season? Do I need to transfer? Now I'm thinking about transfer portal.

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Yeah. Yeah, they're making that, that's transporters so scary to me because again that didn't exist when I played and they wouldn't

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have wanted me anyway, but that's fine. But the, the,

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that's now you're making big business and life altering decisions that um that can really affect your career,

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not just as an athlete but as a professional if you're. Well, not all these people are gonna go pro,

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so tell me about that. Tell me about transfer portal. That's such a big, big decision that I don't think can be made too lightly.

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It cannot. Um, so transfer portal, it, it wasn't, it,

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it didn't exist back in my day either, right? Back in our day, you transfer, you had to sit out for a year.

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Now you can transfer.

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Every semester, right? Yeah, most of the in most student athletes' careers,

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they will have gone to at least 3 different schools.

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Yeah, um, so the transfer portal is very tricky. Um, it typically opens when your season ends.

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Um, for that particular sport. So there's a, a window in time in which it opens and when it closes,

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and students have the flexibility to go into this transfer portal and potentially get picked up by a different school.

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It's very, um, It's a fifty-fifty. You can go in this portal and you take the chance of getting selected by another

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school, or you can go in this portal and you don't, and now you have to see if the institution that you were trying to leave is willing to take

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you back. But you could. Lose your scholarship. There's so many different avenues and uh so many different things that can happen

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by going into here, um, and then like I said, social media,

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you have, um, I want to perform my best because the better I perform. The more NIL money that I may receive,

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you know, I can, I'm financially stable, and, and so the transfer portal is very tricky in that it's not 100%

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guaranteed that you're gonna land, um, somewhere that you want to go.

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And what, what, so professional athletes, they have agents, they have advisors, and also they're

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More mature adults, and I'm not insulting the student-athletes, but your prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed for future thinking until much later.

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These kids are 18 to 22 years old, roughly. I mean, I know I couldn't make a decision like that

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at the time. And do they have advisors, or is that what you do, help with? Um, so I do not try to advise.

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Um, I still treat it like a counseling session. You come in, you, obviously they're stressed, right?

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They're concerned, their anxiety is getting the best of them as it pertains to the transfer portal.

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And so my job, like I tell anybody else in counseling, I'm just,

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I'm here to help you. I'm gonna walk. you, but at some point you have to go right or left.

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But I'm gonna be here and I'm gonna walk beside you. I'm gonna be here with you, um, no matter which way you go.

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Um, we're going to be here with you as we explore those pros and cons to the decisions that,

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you know, lie ahead of you. So I do not get into that, yes, you should or no you shouldn't.

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I'm going to absolutely leave that up to that student athlete, um, their parent, and their coaches,

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but no, I do not have any parts of it. Um, so yeah, they, they entered that on their,

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their own free will, but it some.

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Some student athletes do have advisors, and some do have agents. We live in this world now where students are being paid to play.

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And so like you said, those are big decisions that carry them for the next 5, 10 years,

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the decisions that they choose to make. And so some have agents, some just utilize their parents for support,

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um, to help them guide their decision making, um, because they you want go into the portal and land in the best place

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and position possible. The same as with a professional athlete, right? Like you say, their agents negotiating the best contract for them.

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Once a student-athlete enters the portal, the portal's open, then you can start having those conversations with um different universities,

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but you can't have those conversations if you're not in the portal. Right,

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this is I mean, I get it. They're, they're working. This is, this is work they're doing,

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and they're providing a service and a product for the school and the fans and all that. But man,

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just part of me feels like the human element. Just, this is a lot to put on somebody. It is because guess what,

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you still got the academic piece, yeah, yeah, and transferring to, let's say you transfer to a different state. Well,

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now are your core curriculum going to fit and

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are you gonna go for a 5th or 6th year now, or are you going to leave without a degree because you tapped out your athletic potential,

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and I, I don't know. This is, this is.

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It brings on more stress.

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More stress, more anxiety, because you still have to perform in the classroom as well,

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right? Whether you're transferring or not, you're on the road traveling for away games,

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you still have to perform in the classroom because you still have to be academically eligible.

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So they're juggling a lot of things, their, their schedule, their academic. Schedule,

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their weightlifting schedule, their treatment schedule, their practice schedule, their playing schedule.

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I, when I look at their calendars, I'm like, when do you guys have a chance to take a nap?

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Yeah, they're working a full-time job and going to school full time because they have to go to school full time.

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I did that in grad school and

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I mean that, oh my gosh, right?

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But If anything went wrong in my life, if my mom died or

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or I broke up with my girlfriend, I don't, I don't think I would have the emotional energy to handle that.

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Is this, is this something you're seeing quite often, like something happens in your life? Yeah, absolutely.

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Um, what I want my, the parents to have is

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situational awareness, right? Because what you just said, sometimes you lose a family member in the middle of the season,

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right? And you, your parent would just tell them. I, I had a parent tell a student athlete and they were

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on a two game road trip and I said, let's wait until they come back, right? Let's, let's not do that while they're on the road because now you've hit

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them with this and they're still supposed to go out and perform. They're struggling,

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they're, they're struggling and so that's when I get to come in and And you know, coaches are the the first line of defense,

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so they do the best that they can and they're like, hey, wait, go, Ms. Lewis, this is outside of my wheelhouse.

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This person's grandmother has passed, can you, you know, support them, you know, or anything else. And and so that's when I get to step in and and do my

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thing.

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Yeah, that's that's interesting and so you do have a relationship with.

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Sometimes the parents will,

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um,

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proactively reach out, which I am grateful for. Um, I've had parents who proactively reach out for,

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um, a death, which I was very happy for, um, because now that allows me to proactively as well,

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reach out to that student-athlete, let them know about the resources that we have on campus. Um, and be able to support them in their,

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um, their grieving process. Yeah, interesting, you know, I actually, I'm, I'm going back to my days playing football.

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I remember hearing devastating news the day before a game, and I was playing defensive end at the time and I had,

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uh, there's video of me playing because we always took video, right? Uh, and There was a comment like,

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you know, Bateman's running like half the speed he typically does, and I didn't even notice that, you know, but like barely there,

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so I could see, but, but these athletes with the transfer portal and everything on the line, I didn't have much on the line,

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I was just playing, um, but they can't have a day like that.

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Mm, no, they can't, and because society. wants to judge.

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Like you said, you had just got devastating news right before you went out to play, but nobody even considered,

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like, I wonder if something's going on with you, right? It just, uh, you're you're strong, you're tough,

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you've got your pads on on the field, you need to give it 100%. But I just got really devastating news before I even took the field.

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And sometimes that devastating news does not translate into anger, aggression,

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being the fastest. Sometimes that translates into, I just need a moment. I need to cry,

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you know, I need to. I need to breathe and uh, but commentators don't think that way.

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They don't take that into consideration. They just,

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it, it is interesting when you, you listen to ESPN or something like that and it's, it's almost a commodification of these people,

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you know, the human side tends to go away, um, but I'll get off the soapbox. Uh,

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one thing I want to say before the, and at the end of this, before we end this episode up,

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uh, uh, I talked a lot about football, you mentioned some basketball, um. Is it any different between the sports,

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like, uh, is the golf team a little bit different than the, uh, volleyball team, or yeah,

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yeah, um, it is, um. So we have um men's lacrosse,

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um, they, they're such a fun bunch, um, but they are different. They are very more,

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they're more emotionally aware, um, than my other like football or basketball,

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like they're just very more in tune and talk about emotions all the time. They are a fun bunch.

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Um, 1. They're mostly international. Their, their workout music can be anything from,

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uh, rock to R&B. Like you just never know, you go on a roller coaster with them,

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um, but they are very tough and very firm, um, and I, I think it's like a lot of like their culture and where they're

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from, um.

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Volleyball is very much, uh, we have women's volleyball teams, so they are very much in tune as well.

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Um, they're concerned about safety and well-being. Um, so every team, they're all different,

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um, and I, I enjoy the, the experience that I have with all of them,

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um. They're fun. I have something different with each team, um, and I

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feel like this is fun, like former student athlete, current counselor, I'm like, this sounds like a fun job. You're having fun,

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it sounds like. It is, you get the best of both worlds, you know, because sometimes it's sitting down in your seat all day doing therapy for 8 hours

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can be draining. But when I get to go out here and Educate on how to capitalize on moments of reset

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in the moment and not when I'm sitting, but actually standing up is like amazing.

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Like you just kind of get, I get to sit down, I get to stand up and I get to coach you through that moment of Of reset,

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especially like with tennis when they change over. All right, so that set was bad. Let's talk about the reset.

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And so being able to do it in the moment is, it's fun, it's exciting. It sounds amazing.

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OK, one thing I want to hit on, we have like 2 minutes left and, and I

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The Hampton University is a historical black college, right? What is, you know, it sounds like to me when you're talking,

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we're talking about different genders and things that brought different sports, but it sounds like the, the prevalent thing among student-athletes is anxiety,

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and I bet that I, I, I can imagine that's among all ethnicities and backgrounds regardless of the sport, right?

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But what, what's, what's your unique experience at Hampton, you know, what you would think may not,

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may not exist at other universities, you know. Virginia Tech or something like that. My unique experience is me.

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Um,

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one, obviously, um, being at HBCU and being African American myself, so I can relate that way,

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but I'm also a military spouse, and with that, I have lived in other,

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um, countries. And so I have experienced some of the cultures that,

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um, my student athletes have experienced as well. And so being able to connect with them on From a humanistic,

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um, approach is nice, and because I'm at a campus, like you said, I like kind of kiddos,

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um, I'm able to be transparent to enough where I can share,

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hey, I've lived in Germany for 4 years and now I have a student who's also from Germany,

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actually one that was like 1 hour away from where I live. And so being able to connect that way,

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so my connection and uniqueness is my lived experience, and that allows me to connect with the athletes.

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This is a lot of fun. I'm loving this discussion, Michelle, so we're gonna have to wrap it up there,

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but on part three, we're gonna talk about more. We talked about integration and collaboration with the staff. We want to get a little deeper in that because I think

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that's some nuts and bolts stuff that's really gonna help some of our listeners, so.

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Come back to part 3.

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Thank you for joining us. Be sure to keep an eye out for episode 3 of the Supporting the Student Athlete Series.

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You've been listening to Sentara Vital Signs, a podcast created for Sentara providers.

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As a reminder, please check today's show notes for details on how to claim your continuing education credits.

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That's it for now, but we'll be back soon with another episode of Vital Signs, the podcast that delivers evidence-based education for physicians

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and healthcare providers on the go.