Mental Health In Sports

There’s a lot that goes into playing sports, even if it’s just a hobby or if you’re a professional. Some people take the game seriously to the point where it becomes their whole life. One of the downsides of professional sports is the injuries that come along with playing. Depending on the sport, there’s a lot of physical contact.

Football has a lot of head injuries due to tackling. Hockey as body checking. Baseball as arm injuries due to the constant throwing and hitting. Over time, the more injuries you endure, the more it’s going to hurt your mental health.

When a player gets injured, it's more than likely their going to be out of the game for a while. Coaches and managers don’t want the player to make the injury worse. It could last weeks, sometimes months. Depending on the injury, it can end a career. Some players have to retire from playing because they are constantly getting injured or an injury is too severe and they can't play.

Football players are prone to head injuries and concessions because of how physical the game is. It’s usually left untreated because the player is convinced they can keep playing even as the symptoms get worse. It’s not until the player dies that the brain gets checked out that there’s signs of numerous head injuries that could have been treated if they had gone to the doctor.

With injuries comes medication, which if you’re not careful, it can lead to addiction. The more pain meds you take, the better you feel. As time goes on, you rely on pills to be able to function. Players will lean towards alcohol because they don’t have anything else going on, so they drink to pass the time which in the long run doesn’t make recovery any easier and it doesn’t make the player return to the game faster. It only slows down the progress.

There’s also a lot of pressure to get into professional sports. Players will start when their young with their only goal in life is to go pro. It’s the parents that encourage their kids to only play sports and be their only thing in life. A lot of the time, the stress of trying to be the best will start to take its toll as the child gets older. Parents, especially the fathers want to live their sports dream though their kids make them resent their parents or kids think that going pro will get them out of their hometown because nobody else in their family weren’t able to get a higher education and get out of town.

Mickey Mantle from the New York Yankees struggled with alcohol and was injured a lot in his career. His mindset was that since all the males in his family had died young, he was going to die young as well. So, he did whatever he wanted because he knew he wasn’t going to live that long. He ended up living longer then he thought. If he knew he was going to get to the age he was, he would have taken better care of himself.

Aaron Hernandez, the football player who ended up in jail for murder committed suicide. At the request of his family, Hernandez's brain was released to Boston University to be studied for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degenerative disease found in people who have had a severe blow or repeated blows to the head, including football players.

Chris Benoit, the wrestler killed his wife and son before committing suicide.

Toxicology reports released on July 17, 2007, revealed that at their time of death, Nancy had three different drugs in her system: Xanax, hydrocodone, and hydromorphone, all of which were found at the therapeutic rather than toxic levels. Daniel was found to have Xanax in his system, which led the chief medical examiner to believe that he was sedated before he was murdered. Benoit was found to have Xanax, hydrocodone, and an elevated level of testosterone, caused by a synthetic form of the hormone, in his system. The chief medical examiner attributed the testosterone level to Benoit possibly being treated for a deficiency caused by previous steroid abuse or testicular insufficiency. There was no indication that anything in Benoit's body contributed to his violent behaviour that led to the murder-suicide, concluding that there was no "roid-rage" involved.

Prior to the murder-suicide, Benoit had illegally been given medications not in compliance with WWE's Talent Wellness Program in February 2006, including nandrolone, an anabolic steroid, and anastrozole, a breast cancer medication which is used by bodybuilders for its powerful antiestrogenic effects. During the investigation into steroid abuse, it was revealed that other wrestlers had also been given steroids.

After the double-murder suicide, neuroscientist and retired professional wrestler Christopher Nowinski contacted Michael Benoit, Chris's father, suggesting that years of trauma to his son's brain may have led to his actions. Tests were conducted on Benoit's brain by Julian Bailes, the head of neurosurgery at West Virginia University, and results showed that "Benoit's brain was so severely damaged it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient.”  He was reported to have had an advanced form of dementia, similar to the brains of four retired NFL players who had multiple concussions, sank into depression, and harmed themselves or others. Bailes and his colleagues concluded that repeated concussions can lead to dementia, which can contribute to severe behavioural problems. Benoit's father suggests that brain damage may have been the leading cause.

Injuries are common in sports, it’s part of the game. If you are passionate about your sport and want to keep playing. You have to be willing to do the work. You have to take care of yourself. Injuries can change you and some of them are a lot harder to recover from. You have to prove that you are serious about treatment and be willing to take suggestions from doctors and therapists. The longer you prolong an injury, the harder it’s going to be for you to come back.

Just because you feel good in the moment, doesn’t mean that it’s going to be okay at a later time. You’re going to have to listen to your body, take a break, speak up. Your mental health is a lot more important. Sports are always going to be there. You have to respect the game.