Even as the chaotic state of college sports makes headlines, with a bill passing the US Senate that would bring sweeping policy changes, the well-being of the athletes who fuel the multi-billion-dollar industry seems to be treated as secondary.<\/p>\n
That might have more dire consequences than ever, a startling new survey<\/a> suggests.<\/p>\n In a study coming out of Rutgers University and led by Dr. Allison Bond, herself a former student-athlete, nearly 40 percent of the NCAA student-athletes surveyed across Division I, II, and III reported that they have experienced suicidal<\/a> thoughts at some point. What\u2019s more, only 36 percent said they had received any sort of mental-health-related training that included aspects of suicide prevention. <\/p>\n Suicide is the third-leading cause of death generally across the age group of college students (18-22). Among college athletes, however, it rises up to the second. While student-athletes may potentially enjoy higher levels of physical health due to their physical conditioning, supervision by team medical providers, and resources in terms of nutrition<\/a> and exercise facilitates, ironically they might experience intensified mental health dangers as compared to those who do not play a college sport. From inhospitable travel schedules and dozens of extra required hours of physical work per week to performance pressures that make them fear<\/a> losing their scholarships if they\u2019re not playing well, student-athlete stressors abound. For many, their athletic<\/a> performance is the biggest part of their identity<\/a>\u2014even as it comes with decreased sleep, physical exhaustion and unrealistic expectations from fans. <\/p>\n “Student-athletes are telling us that they’re struggling, and they’re telling us that they want resources,” Dr. Bond said in a press release.<\/p>\n In fact, the pressures of being a high-profile college athlete may be greater than ever before, due to the combination of two particularly potent shifts in our cultural landscape: the prevalence of social media<\/a> and online sports betting. More and more college athletes are expected to keep up a perfected social media presence, and in fact it is sometimes part of their financial contract. The pressure to post publicly, create a personal “brand” and let fans into their private lives, rather than just performing on the field or in the arena, is greater than ever before.<\/p>\n And the audiences on social media may be more brutal than any stadium crowd used to be. Now that putting money on a game is so easy and increasing in popularity, student-athletes are being subjected to more and more abuse. Fans are now not only more likely to become enraged at a subpar performance because they lost money on it, but they are much more likely to channel that rage<\/a> directly into attacks on players. A different, previous study <\/a>reported that a whopping 36 percent <\/a>of D1 men’s basketball players had been on the receiving end of abusive social media messages related to sports betting. <\/p>\n What does this mean for the future of college sports? As legislators debate policies and regulations on the institutional side, it seems a better time than ever to increase mental health supports for the athletes themselves. Ultimately, that is the score that matters most by far. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even as the chaotic state of college sports makes headlines, with a bill passing the US Senate that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-616524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}