Professor Brad Donohue: How we can harness sports to help normalize mental health

I had the pleasure to interview Licensed clinical psychologist Brad Donohue. Brad is a UNLV professor of psychology and director of The Optimum Performance Program in Sports (TOPPS) — a mental health program targeted specifically to college athletes. He also writes a regular column for Psychology Today.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to this specific career path?

My interest in mental wellness occurred for the first time as a competitive boxer. Through sport participation, I realized firsthand the important connection between mind and body. Many years later, my students and I conducted the first National Institutes of Health-funded mental health study involving college athletes. Our research showed that optimization approaches to mental wellness are capable of benefiting people who share unique cultures and specialized skill sets, such as athletes.

According to Mental Health America’s report, over 44 million Americans have a mental health condition. Yet there’s still a stigma about mental illness. Can you share a few reasons you think this is so?

Traditional psychotherapies for mental health have been focused on the assessment and treatment of psychiatric “disorders.”…