Supporting young elite athletes with mental health issues: Coaches’ experience and their perceived role

Florence Lebrun, Dave Collins*, Àine MacNamara, Sheelagh Rodgers

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This study explored talent-development coaches’ experiences of athletes having faced mental health issues (MHIs). A second objective was to allow participants to share their opinion on how sport environments could improve the support offered to coaches and athletes encountering MHIs. A thematic analysis was performed on 11 verbatim-transcribed interviews conducted with UK-based talent-development coaches. While monitoring and supporting their athletes’ performance and well-being were viewed as day-to-day practice, dealing with MHIs was, however, not considered part of their role for a variety of reasons. Findings also suggest that coaches need more suitable and context-specific knowledge and tools to appropriately respond to and support their athletes. Generating a better understanding of coaches’ perceived role, knowledge, and needs to adequately support their athletes suffering from MHIs is crucial for the design of sport-specific interventions and for the athletes themselves.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)43-53
Number of pages11
JournalSport Psychologist
Volume34
Issue number1
Early online date10 Mar 2020
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 10 Mar 2020

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • coaching
  • sport
  • talent development
  • thematic analysis

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