This unique book provides a practical framework for and coverage of a broad range of mental health concerns applicable to the care of athletes, including depression, suicide, mood disorders, substance abuse and risk-taking behaviors. To this end, it presents content relevant to the care of athletes, including doping and the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the mental health impact of concussion, bullying and hazing, the impact of social media and exercise addiction, among other pertinent topics. Current basic and translational research on behavioral health and the relationship of brain to behavior are reviewed, and current treatment approaches, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological (including mindfulness training), are considered. This practical resource targets the stigma of mental in athletes in order to overcome barriers to care by presenting a definitive perspective of current concepts in the mental health care of athletes, provided by experts in the field and targeting sports medicine providers, mental health providers and primary care physicians involved in the direct care of recreational and competitive athletes at all levels.

The Athlete Mental Health Playbook is a beginner's guide to mental wellness for athletes because players are humans, not robots. Growing up around sports and athletes, Misty Buck learned that expressing emotions were often labeled with phrases like, "stop being weak" or "you're soft." However, when she was a teenager, she endured difficulties and began to experience mental health issues. As she would come to learn, she wasn't the only one struggling who felt like they couldn't show it or talk about it. It took Misty many years to learn that mental health issues don't mean you're crazy, weak, or broken and that managing mental wellness truly takes an ongoing mind, body, and soul holistic plan, which is why she is so passionate about sharing those messages and tools today. In the Athlete Mental Playbook you'll learn: Why mental health issues don't make you weak How to bridge the gap between mental toughness and mental health How mental health can affect your body 10 super-powered mindset shifts The book also includes a multitude of hands-on exercises to help you begin to gain peace and clarity.

This book approaches the study of mental illness in sport cultures from a variety of social scientific perspectives. Contributions focus on the multiple manifestations of mental illness within sport cultures, and the degree to which sport may be utilized as a means of helping people who struggle with mental illness.

Mental Health in Elite Sport: Applied Perspectives from Across the Globe provides a focused, exhaustive overview of up-to-date mental health research, models, and approaches in elite sport to provide researchers, practitioners, coaches, and students with contemporary knowledge and strategies to address mental health in elite sport across a variety of contexts. Mental Health in Elite Sport is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses globally on mental health service provision structures and cases specific to different world regions and countries. The second part focuses on specific mental health interventions across countries but also illustrates specific case studies and interventions as influenced by the local context and culture. This tour around the world offers readers an understanding of the massive global differences in mental health service provision within different situations and organizations. This is the first book of its kind in which highly experienced scholars and practitioners openly share their programs, methods, reflections, and failures on working with mental health in different contexts. By using a global, multi-contextual analysis to address mental health in elite sport, this book is an essential text for practitioners such as researchers, coaches, athletes, as well as instructors and students across the sport science and mental health fields.

The aim of Comprehensive Applied Sport Psychology (CASP) is to challenge our field to look beyond its current status and propel applied sport psychology and mental training forward and outward with a broad and multi-layered examination of everything psychological, emotionally, and socially that the athletic community contends with in pursuit of athletic success and that sport psychologists and mental trainers do in their professional capacities. Comprehensive Applied Sport Psychology is the first professional book aimed at offering a truly expansive and deep exploration of just about everything that applied sport psychologists, consultants and mental trainers do in their work. CASP plumbs the depths of the athletic mind including attitudes, psychological and emotional obstacles, mental "muscles" and mental "tools," quality of sport training, the health and well-being of athletes, and other areas that are essential to athletic success. This new volume examines not only the many ways that consultants impact athletes, but also explores their work with coaches, teams, parents, and interdisciplinary groups such as sports medicine team and sports management. The book is grounded in both the latest theory and research, thus making it a valuable part of graduate training in applied sport psychology, as well as a practical resource for consultants who work directly with athletes, coaches, teams, and parents. The goal of CASP, in collaboration with dozens of the leading minds in the field, is to create the definitive guide to what applied sport psychology and mental training are and do.

Even among the most elite performers, certain athletes stand out as a cut above the rest, able to outperform in clutch, game-deciding moments. These athletes prove that raw athletic ability doesn't necessarily translate to a superior on-field experience—its the mental game that matters most. Sports participation—from the recreational to the collegiate Division I level—is at an all-time high. While the caliber of their games may differ, athletes at every level have one thing in common: the desire to excel. In The Champion's Mind, sports psychologist Jim Afremow, PhD, offers the same advice he uses with Olympians, Heisman Trophy winners, and professional athletes, including: • How to get in a "zone," thrive on a team, and stay humble • How to progress within a sport and sustain long-term excellence • Customizable pre-performance routines to hit full power when the gun goes off or the puck is dropped With hundreds of useful tips, breakthrough science, and cutting-edge workouts from the world's top trainers, The Champion's Mind will help you shape your body to ensure a longer, healthier, happier lifetime.

This book has it all - written by national and international experts and edited by world authorities, it is the first book on sport psychiatry in over a decade. Dealing with psychopathology, mental health problems and clinical management, it differs markedly from sports psychology books that focus on performance issues. Eating disorders, exercise addiction, drug abuse are all problems that are seen in 'everyday' athletes, not just elite performers. This book shows how to help. This text covers the most important topics in contemporary sports psychiatry/psychology from an international perspective. Chapter authors are experts in the field and global leaders in the related professional organizations, including current and past Presidents/Chairs of the International Society for Sports Psychiatry and of the World Psychiatric Association Section on Exercise and Sports Psychiatry. Authors are mainly psychiatrists: the rest are PhD sport psychologists. The book comprises representative chapter authors from around the world, to an extent unprecedented in this topic. The authors and editors are well-informed in global perspectives, e.g., having served as consultants to numerous Olympic teams, in addition to service on the International Society for Sports Psychiatry's Board of Directors. Specifically, this book covers four main categories of topics: 1) mental health challenges faced by athletes (including substance use disorders, exercise addiction, eating disorders, depression, suicide, and concussion), 2) treatment approaches and therapeutic issues with athletes (including different types of psychotherapy for psychiatric disorders, psychotherapeutic performance enhancement approaches, transference and countertransference issues, achievement by proxy, psychotherapeutic issues as applied to a couple of sports that are played around the world, and use of psychiatric medications in athletes), 3) psychosocial issues affecting athletes (including sexual harassment and abuse, cultural issues, and ethics issues), and 4) the field of sports psychiatry (including work within one common sports psychiatry practice setting, and current status of and challenges in the field of sports psychiatry). There is a growing need for this book. Performance-enhancing drugs, use of psychotropics in impaired athletes, head trauma, sexual abuse, eating disorders, ethics, and depression and suicide in athletes, are just a few of the timely subjects addressed in this text. This is the only comprehensive reference available for those working in the field (or merely interested in it) to consult for current information on these topics. The existing sports psychology texts all focus on performance issues, with little, if any, attention paid to these areas of clinical significance. The book addresses the core differences between sports psychiatry and sports psychology, as well as the areas of overlap. Emphasis is placed on how the disciplines should work together in diagnosing and treating athletes dealing with emotional stress and psychopathology. Chapters include case examples and specific goals listed at the beginning, along with tables and graphs to highlight key concepts.

The demands of the high-performance athlete are huge, with many celebrated for their achievements, and put on a pedestal for admired personality traits such as discipline, sacrifice, commitment, and focus. This book seeks to explore the celebrated traits of the high-performance athlete and, by doing so, to increase awareness of the vulnerability that such traits also present. Through discussion with professional sports people and presentation of their own personal stories the book explores obsessionality, masochism, and focus, and how these characteristics can enhance performance on the field yet hinder life off it and may even develop into clinically diagnosable mental health difficulties. In psychology, assessments are based on statistical phenomena; the title Skewed to the Right is based on the 'bell curve' that is shown through a graph whereby the majority sit in the middle with a few clusters at either on of the extremes. The suggestion is that elite athletes are 'skewed to the right' on a number of key traits that put them between the 'general' population and those with a clinical diagnosis. The book opens with an exploration of weight-restricted sport and how making weight is achieved through practices that become culturally acceptable in the sporting world yet would be seen to be classified as clinically diagnosable eating disorders in the medical world. It then moves on to personality traits that help and hinder - those skewed to the right: masochism, obsessionality, and focus. Part 3 looks at one trait skewed to the left - acceptance - that many sportspeople struggle with. The book closes with a section exploring points of vulnerability for all athletes and ends with a look at where we can go from here. The aim of the book is to increase social awareness of the reality of life for the successful high-performance athlete and the challenging dynamics that exist in sporting culture today. It will be of interest to psychologists, psychotherapists, trainees, and anyone with an interest in sporting culture.

The heartbreaking story of college athlete Madison Holleran, whose life and death by suicide reveal the struggle of young people suffering from mental illness today in this #1 New York Times Sports and Fitness bestseller. If you scrolled through the Instagram feed of 19-year-old Maddy Holleran, you would see a perfect life: a freshman at an Ivy League school, recruited for the track team, who was also beautiful, popular, and fiercely intelligent. This was a girl who succeeded at everything she tried, and who was only getting started. But when Maddy began her long-awaited college career, her parents noticed something changed. Previously indefatigable Maddy became withdrawn, and her thoughts centered on how she could change her life. In spite of thousands of hours of practice and study, she contemplated transferring from the school that had once been her dream. When Maddy's dad, Jim, dropped her off for the first day of spring semester, she held him a second longer than usual. That would be the last time Jim would see his daughter. What Made Maddy Run began as a piece that Kate Fagan, a columnist for espnW, wrote about Maddy's life. What started as a profile of a successful young athlete whose life ended in suicide became so much larger when Fagan started to hear from other college athletes also struggling with mental illness. This is the story of Maddy Holleran's life, and her struggle with depression, which also reveals the mounting pressures young people -- and college athletes in particular -- face to be perfect, especially in an age of relentless connectivity and social media saturation.