The delay in accepting the problem and asking for help makes diagnosis difficult and worsens the mental health of elite athletes, as witnessed by the testimonies of Vanessa Fernandes, Inês Henriques and Bárbara Timo, during the Mental Health Seminar in High-Competition Sports , organized by the Portuguese Association of Olympic Athletes (AAOP) and the Portuguese Association of Psychiatry and Mental Health (SPPSM).
Vanessa Fernandes is one of five Olympic medal-winning female athletes in Portugal, along with Rosa Mota, Fernanda Ribeiro, Vanessa Fernandes, Telma Monteiro and Patrícia Mamona. And that says a lot about the pressure she felt to be an exemplary athlete and the difficulty admitting and communicating that something wasn’t right, which caused her to fall into the obscurity of the media. It was only last year that he revealed to the world that he was suffering from bulimia and depression. A clinical picture he already had when he won the Olympic silver medal in Beijing in 2008.
“The year 2017 was important, because then I said enough. And that was very complicated. I could not handle the help that was there for me then because I did not trust it and I felt that no one understood me, in addition to the enormous shame that I had. I had to start a process of self-knowledge and this has been my job for the past five years, to know my history and my pastAn Olympic medalist confessed yesterday during the seminar at the Lisbon Forum.
The issue of mental health in elite sport came to the fore when swimmer Michael Phelps (the most self-titled Olympian in history, with 28 medals) admitted to suffering from depression in 2016 and revealed he had attempted suicide. And it definitely got on the media agenda when gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. “She had the ability to raise awareness of this issue. You need memory to have history, you have to have the create sustainability of the theme,” defended Luís Monteiro, leader of the AAOP.
The pandemic has exacerbated the problem. According to revealed data, about 70% of athletes had mental health problems since March 2020 – until then, the number ranged between 40 and 50%. Judoka Bárbara Timo was one of the victims. She was diagnosed with depression, which forced her to announce that she was taking a break.🇧🇷
Gold at the 2021 Paris Grand Slam and bronze at this year’s World Cup were achievements after a depression. “I consult a lot with the psychologist of the club (Benfica) and I have a mental coachbecause although I don’t doubt my abilities now, I still have doubts about what it’s like to be a woman and an athlete, and about what I’m going to do after my career,” said the judoka, admitting that yoga and meditation help “body awareness.” to get”.
Bárbara Timo had to “fight the most negative thoughts” to get back to the top: “My fear makes me study opponents more, it forces me to go to the psychologist and cry, because that’s what I do there, because of my fears and my doubts. Fear makes me the first to arrive at training and the last to leave. All this so that race day becomes a holiday.”
The same diagnosis – depression – led the marcher Inês Henriques, world champion of the 50 kilometer march, in London 2017, to ask for help before running the World Cup in 2021. “It’s not always easy, but I’m trying a different psychological management and I’m trying to keep the balance,” said the 42-year-old, who hopes to complete her career in Paris 2024.
Rosa Mota, Olympic marathon champion in 1988, attended and said she never suffered from mental disorders while running. “I never needed this kind of help. I always loved training, I always loved competing, I always understood competition as a challenge and I was not afraid of my challenges and I think I did well,” said he.
But there are people who have problems and are condemned for it. “There is stigma and discrimination. Often it is the athlete who stigmatizes himself and is ashamed to communicate to the family, the coach and his colleagues that he is suffering psychologically, delaying the seeking of help and the improvement of his symptoms.”revealed Maria João Heitor, APPSM president.
Post career is a problem
Analiza Silva, Program Coordinator Champ4life of the Faculty of Human Motor Skills at the University of Lisbon, revealed that a group of 94 former athletes who participated in a study – 12 educational sessions on topics such as diet and eating behavior, physical activity and sedentary behavior – improved several parameters related to mental health health and quality of life, namely functional capacity in 16%, general health in 38% and vitality in 53%.
The question now is what to do with these results.
Source: DN
