Sport psychologists work on mental areas that are essential to performance. We believe that if the sporting fraternity had an accurate view of what we do (they generally don’t) that sport psychologists would be as common – if not more common – than strength and conditioning coaches and physios. There mental areas include:
Moderating confidence, anxiety levels, amount of motivation
Learning when to concertante (switch on) and when not to concentrate (switch off)
Improving fast decision making (while practising and competing) and slow decision making (how to use time, balance training with life and work out what to do after retiring)
Planning practice sessions that allow the athletes to control how mentally difficult they are
Learning to think more productively
Learning how to practice in more than one way (for example via imagery)
Combining all of this to allow for better performances under pressure
Clinical psychologists work on mental illnesses that only exist in a minority of the population. These issues are many (In 1994, DSM-IV was published, listing 297 disorders in 886 pages) the most common of which can be summarized below:
Common Axis I disorders include depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and schizophrenia.
Common Axis II disorders include personality disorders: paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, and mental retardation.
Common Axis III disorders include brain injuries and other medical/physical disorders which may aggravate existing diseases or present symptoms similar to other disorders.
One of the long term goals of Condor Performance is for the very clear and significant difference between sport psychologists and clinical psychologists to be common knowledge. With this in mind you might like to forward on this blog entry. Cheers, GJM