
Mental Health And Mental Toughness Are Not The Same
All too often, sport psychology is misconstrued as therapy for athletes. If you watched the wildly popular Ted Lasso series, then you’d be forgiven for believing this. On the other hand, sometimes “mental coaches” overlook the human elements and focus entirely on the mental aspects of performance.
Both approaches are wrong, ineffective, and, at times, dangerous and unethical.
Competitive Athletes Have Three Layers
When it comes to the increasingly popular concept of performance psychology, it can be helpful to view the “performer” as having three layers. Each layer is better off by the strength of the layer or layers underneath.
The bottom layer is 100% related to the person, not the performer. We could refer to this as the COPING layer. If there are problems here, then these are genuine mental health concerns. Mental Illness lives here.
The severity of the mental illness is related to how they function as a person interacting with their society. If this person is an elite athlete, then, of course, it will impact their performance. However, it’s likely to hinder them in several other areas as well. By way of an example, let’s consider a competitive athlete who has clinical depression. This serious mental disorder may well decrease their motivation to train in their chosen sport. But if it’s a genuine Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), then their motivation will be down across most (all) areas of their life, not just their sporting commitments.
The most extreme cases result in the sufferer being institutionalised, for example, having to spend time in either a hospital or a mental health recovery facility.
The Middle Layer
The middle layer is all about mental well-being. Mental well-being and mental illness are not the same despite obviously being related to one another. Somebody can have poor mental well-being but still cope very well as a human.
For this reason, we would label these middle layers CONTENTMENT. Again, this layer remains entirely related to the person, not the performer. The scientifically suggested methods to improve contentment should focus on humanistic factors relevant to everyone, not just those in performance situations. For example, areas such as socialising, getting into nature and sleep hygiene strategies.
The Top Layer
The top layer is all about the mental aspects of performance. We could dedicate the following 20 blog articles to explaining precisely what this refers to, but as many of you know, at Condor Performance, we prefer to keep things simple.
This layer could be labelled as mental toughness. With a much better understanding of the humanistic aspects underlying it, it creates the freedom to be unapologetically focused on optimising performance through psychological means. Improving this layer helps drive CONSISTENCY.
Behind the scenes at Condor Performance, we are conducting our largest-ever research project to identify the exact subcomponents of mental toughness and the processes best suited to boost them. (Our current and future clients will be the first to benefit from these findings, so if you want to have a chat with Tara about working with one of our performance psychologists or sports psychologists, then book yourself directly into her calendar here.)
One of the many benefits of working with a qualified sports psychologist is that we can and do work across all three layers. Although in extreme situations (in the coping layer at the bottom), we may prefer to refer clients to other specialists, we are qualified to help them cope, be more content, and be more consistent (the byproduct of greater mental toughness at the top layer).
Mental Issues Common In Sport
Back to that bottom layer for a moment.
If you’re looking for some cold, hard facts about mental health issues common in sports, I have added a couple of articles at the bottom of this article. But this is how I see it. Athletes are human, too, so as humans, they are susceptible to all the usual psychological risks that the general population faces. However, the world in which they find themselves might increase the chances of facing specific mental issues.
One great example is stress. Eloquently described in the below TEDx video by volleyballer Victoria Garrick. High-performance circles are breeding grounds for stress. This is especially true for those involved in low or non-paying sports. The demands of training and competing, in addition to a job and/or studies, can be highly stressful.
Some excellent questions are being debated at the moment around all of this. One is, ‘Surely everyone would want to be mentally tougher, not just performers?’ Not really. First, building genuine mental toughness is very hard. So, although everyone can attempt it, it’s probably not worth it if you’re not likely to encounter ‘extreme mental challenges’.
An Analogy
Think of it as being similar to physical health and physical strength. Everyone could try and work towards being able to lift 150 kgs, but how useful is it for most of us? Where is the ‘return on investment’? Maybe using the equivalent training time to practice mindfulness would be more sensible. However, if you are a weightlifter, rugby player, bodyguard, or defensive tackle, for example, then developing the muscle strength to be able to bench press that amount of weight has a payoff in your performance areas.
Suppose you’re a librarian, on the other hand, not so much—no disrespect to librarians intended. I am sure many librarians are elite performers in their field. However, upper body strength is not that beneficial in pursuing librarian excellence.
Developing Mental Toughness works the same. Although everybody would probably be happy to process extraordinary levels of focus (for example), is it worth investing the time required to get there if you’re never really going to need it?
What Does The Data Tell Us?
Are athletes and coaches more or less likely to experience mental issues compared with the general population? Luckily, work has been done to answer this question. As mentioned in this excellent article by Joshua Sebbens, Peter Hassmén, Dimity Crisp and Kate Wensley, “A study of elite athletes in Australia reported almost half were experiencing symptoms of a mental health problem, and the proportion meeting caseness cutoffs for mental illness were deemed comparable to community data (Gulliver et al., 2015). More broadly, Rice et al. (2016) conducted a systematic narrative review and also suggested the prevalence of mental illness in elite athletes was comparable to the general population.
It’s Not Just About Problems
The Positive Psychology movement exists because many psychologists sought to do more than just address mental health issues. Traditional psychotherapy tends to get people back to ‘just functioning enough, ’ and that’s it. It’s like leaving someone mid-way through their journey.
Sport psychology and her focus on mental toughness were, in many ways, the original positive psychologies.