Bridging gaps by breaking barriers

The answer to the athlete mental health crisis

TW: mentions of suicidal thoughts and attempts.

By Mikaela Brewer | Head of Content & Research at Timeout.

Our Story

Gratefulness and heaviness coexist.

We are grateful.

The lights were our colours; we had the best gear and energized fans; we gathered transferrable skills and powerful life lessons; we built life-long relationships; we smashed our training goals in facilities brimming with equipment; we were guided by talented and specialized staff; we achieved many of our athletic and personal goals, and we earned many victories and hardware.

But we carried too much.

There was heaviness, fatigue, burnout, performance pressure, overwhelm, expectation, systemic stigma, and uncertainty.

There was a required notion of mental toughness: if you can’t power through unconditionally, you’re weak-spirited.

Then there was COVID-19, injustice, a climate crisis, and a recession.

There is a mental health crisis for student-athletes — suicide is the third leading cause of death among them.

Each member of the Timeout. team can relate to these words. For some of us, there were personal battles with suicidal thoughts and attempts. We lost teammates to suicide. We felt burnout, anger, and frustration in the same bones and muscles that made us great at our respective sports.

Thankfully, we found healthy conversation and a chance to heal that each of us desperately needed: a timeout.

We sat down with other athletes. We validated and breathed in their stories — many of which intimately reflected our own.

We found Maya McClendon, the founder & CEO of Timeout., and she found us. We took another timeout and asked more questions: what was perpetuating the mental health crisis in the sports ecosystem?

1. Mistrust and Miseducation → stigma about help-seeking
2. High costs, distant care locations, and long wait times → inaccessibility
3. Multiple reporting lines → disorganized care

Until now, there were limited athlete-specific resources available to address these challenges.

Our mission became clear: save athlete lives. Advocate for athlete mental health and resilience (especially for underserved populations). Empower athletes to be psychologically fit and perform at their best in sport and in life. Provide solutions and tools to institutions to improve sports culture.

We envisioned being the standard assessment and analytics tool for youth, college and professional sports ecosystems.

We’re determined to make our vision a reality.

Timeout. grew into an all-in-one mobile health software. It is a web between all parties involved in athlete mental health care, where the athlete is central. Timeout. seeks to improve and manage athlete mental health and resilience by optimizing evidence-based mental health best practices with AI and gamification.

We’ve gathered some momentum.

We’re honoured to be a part of the 2021 Vogt Cohort.

With your help, we’ve also completed MVP testing and focus groups, which highlighted key themes, ideas, insights, and valuable feedback. Most importantly, we’ve taken moments to pause, listen to what we’ve learned and outline where we’re going next.

As we gratefully reflect on our milestones — both lifted and grounded by research and community — we want to celebrate the value of taking strategic timeouts. We’re training for exponential progress (just like in sports) but we know that making space for pauses will propel us even further. Building in moments to breathe, rest, recover, and reflect will be the backbone of what we’re committing to doing:

1. Center athletes by:

• Following and engaging in current research, best practices, and assessment tools
• Believing in and listening to their anecdotes and stories
• Reflecting on ourselves — Timeout. is being built by athletes for athletes
• Providing clinically trusted and athlete-specific mental health assessments and resources on one digital platform
• Ensuring that athletes control their data

2. Redefine mental toughness by:

• Providing resources, training, and tools that encourage active communication, learning, and growth
• Educating, from the inside out and top to bottom
• Connecting athletic departments, athletes, mental health care providers, athletic trainers, and program administrators to improve engagement, screening, oversight, and referrals for a more proactive mental healthcare experience
• Empowering athletic institutions to prioritize athlete mental health

3. Organize accessibility to care by:

• Ensuring that every athlete has access to mental health care
• Establishing a standard that no athlete slips through the cracks
• Encourage institutions to centralize and optimize mental health best practices
• Simplify screening and oversight using digitalized, clinically tested assessments endorsed by the NCAA’s Sports Science Institute, International Olympic Committee, NATA and the APA

Moving Forward

We’re looking forward to continuing to build, craft, refine, develop, and innovate Timeout. alongside you.

Let’s save athlete lives by centering their experiences, stories, and needs.

Let’s be passionate and driven mental health advocates and activists, and redefine what it means to be mentally tough.

Let’s help athletes perform their best in sport and life, and empower their psychological fitness through access to organized care.

Breathe.

Take a timeout with us.

Then let’s go for the Mental Health Natty.