Race/ethnicity and Stigma in Relation to Unmet Mental Health Needs among Student-athletes

ABSTRACT

College student-athletes are at-risk for mental health issues, as well as for not accessing mental health services. Stigma about needing/receiving mental health services is often presumed to be a barrier to mental healthcare but the role of racial/ethnic minority status is largely absent from inquiries on these processes. Utilizing Healthy Minds Study data spanning 2015–2019 (N_weighted = 4,089), this study examined racial/ethnic variations in mental health stigma in relation to mental health psychotherapy utilization for student-athletes. Interaction results suggested racial/ethnic variations. There were no correlations between personal or perceived public stigma and mental health psychotherapy utilization for racial/ethnic minority student-athletes. Conversely, perceived public stigma was tied to mental health psychotherapy utilization whereas personal stigma was linked to unmet mental health need for White student-athletes. While stigma has been presumed to be a driving force of student-athletes’ unmet mental health needs, findings suggest variations based on racial/ethnic minority status and type of stigma.

KEYWORDS:

• Student-athletes
• mental health
• personal stigma
• perceived public stigma
• race/ethnicity

Disclosure statement

The author did not receive financial support for this work and has no conflict of interest to declare. The data for this research were made available by the Healthy Minds Study.

Notes

1. While this research acknowledges the conceptual distinctions between the terms “race” and “ethnicity,” this study applies the conjoined term “race/ethnicity” and its variants based on the rationale espoused by the Ethnic and Racial Identity in the 21^st Century Study Group. This perspective emphasizes the overlap between racialized experiences (i.e., race) and connections to cultural/ethnic heritage (i.e., ethnicity), as well as the similar links with psychological experiences and adjustment found in the literature, in arguing for combining the terms “race” and “ethnicity” (see Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014 for further discussion).