Mental health among elite sportspeople: Lessons for medical education

Abstract

Leading sportspeople across 2021, such as Simone Biles (US gymnast), Naomi Osaka (Japanese tennis player) and Ben Stokes (English cricketer), have talked openly about the pressure of performing on the highest stage, including the challenge of managing mental health when engaged in elite competition. The withdrawal of Simone Biles midway through the women’s team competition at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games propelled what was seemingly a debate within sport, into what is increasing becomingly wider societal conversation around mental health. The stories of sportspeople struggling to perform at the highest level with mental health contributing to their difficulties, has inevitably prompted much reflection within medical education among teachers and students alike, about parallels in our domain around assessment, feedback and support. The stories demonstrate that mental health problems affect everyone, including those who are at their peak physically, and those who are among the finest on the planet in terms of physical and sporting ability. The same is true within medical education of our students, who are also our future doctors. However, curriculum conversations about assessment, feedback and student support may not be as student-centred as they could be, or perhaps as they should be, with mental health possibly still being a taboo-subject or something associated with stigma within medical education. Here is another opportunity for medical education to learn from other disciplines, such as sports psychology, and now is the time for taking and applying those lessons: not just those around improving technical performance, but those around properly caring, being compassionate, and looking after our future Olympian equivalents.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Isobel Walker

Isobel Walker, Eleanor Brierley and Milap Rajpara, BMedSci, are final year undergraduate medical students at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Talia Patel

Talia Patel and Raisa Jaffer are second year undergraduate medical students at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Calum Heslop

Calum Heslop, BMedSci, is a fourth year undergraduate medical student at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Rakesh Patel

Rakesh Patel, MBChB, MMedEd, MD, is a clinical associate professor of medical education, University of Nottingham, UK and honorary consultant nephrologist, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, UK.