The ups and downs of a sporting career can take their toll on athletes.

Sad news from Germany has led to demands for better psychological services for athletes. For long, it has been a silenced issue.

Last week's news of the suicide of Germany’s national team goalkeeper Robert Enke shocked the footballing world. Although Enke’s life was overshadowed by personal difficulties in recent years, the incident brought the question of mental problems in sports to the forefront. Fearing for his career, Enke never came public with his depression. After his death, Enke’s longtime goalkeeping coach Joerg Sievers, among others, said that depression is a taboo subject in football. “It is definitely seen in some places as a weakness,” he stated.

And it’s not a problem only with football, as confirmed by Matti Jaakkola, one of Finland’s leading sports psychologists. “The sports world doesn’t support talking about your feelings, especially not about the negative ones. This is the case particularly with men, whereas for women it’s more accepted and common.” As the life of a public athlete can be extremely demanding and stressful, this can easily become a problem. “Athletes have exactly the same mental problems as other people. Exhaustion is commonplace, depression occurs and for the judged sports, anorexia is a special problem, as the self-image of athletes easily gets distorted,” says Jaakkola.

Question of resources

Although athletes increasingly use the services of sport psychologists nowadays to improve their performance and mental abilities, issues like depression still aren’t given enough attention. “Caring for the mental well-being of athletes has become more general, and some sport federations direct sufficient resources to it, but in total, it varies too much. It’s often stressed in ceremonial speeches, but in reality, many federations severely lack in the services available,” Jaakkola states. “Athletes often don’t have enough information on where to seek help. But us psychologists also have to sell our services better,” he adds.

As well as the pressures of sporting life, personal problems can also increase the burden on athletes’ psyche, as they do on everyone else. But when in a public profession with a busy competition schedule, do they have enough time and chances to deal with them? “Not sufficiently. In some sports and organisations the athletes get help in these kinds of situations, but often they have to seek for it themselves,” Jaakkola regrets. “It’s a question of resources.”

Mental qualities

As regular exercise provably reduces mental problems, one might come to the conclusion that athletes are less prone to suffer from them. But on the other hand, for an outside observer constantly being under public scrutiny, carrying people’s expectations and repeatedly having to perform under pressure seems like an intimidating task. But it all comes down to how you interpret these conditions, and athletes often have qualities to turn tough situations into their advantage. “Among successful athletes, many similar traits like low tension, low depression and low fatigue can be found. These qualities able them to perform better and reduce the probability of facing mental problems like anxiety,” says Jaakkola.

As mentioned by him, athletes are often somewhat carefree by nature and especially in team sports surrounded with a social circle of like-minded coevals all having their minds set on sporting goals, and the more profound questions of life often get less attention. But this can also come with risk, especially after the career has ended.

“An athlete can always set goals; compete against himself, if nothing else. But when the sporting days come to an end, problems often occur. It’s such a big part of one’s identity and self image that not having future goals or chances to compete and test yourself can make it really hard to adapt to a new role. Former athletes often struggle to find a new meaning in their life,” Jaakkola describes. In this group, Finland has all too many ‘good’ examples.

The main question remains that is a top athlete allowed to suffer from mental health problems? The public limelight certainly doesn’t expect it from them. But they are no supermen or women, and in the future it should be assured that also athletes are given a chance to find another way out than Enke did.

Veli-Matti Peltola - HT
Lehtikuva - Heikki Saukkomaa