National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week
By: Marissa Morah & Mikaela Brewer | Timeout Content Team
What is National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week?
In adulthood, we struggle to understand experiences unique to youth — especially when children face mental health disability, diagnosis, and illness.
Up to six U.S. children aged 6–17 currently experience depression, anxiety, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) — all treatable mental health disorders (WHO). Most instances are undetected and untreated, even though half of all mental health conditions begin before the age of 14 (WHO). In 15-19 year-olds, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death. Both physical and mental health in adulthood can be severely impacted by unaddressed mental health challenges in childhood and adolescence.
More than a decade ago, SAMHSA created National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day to emphasize the impact of mental health on youth development. Now, National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week is an opportunity to reshape conversations about youth mental health and resilience. It aims to increase public awareness about severe mental illness and emotional disturbance, and provide evidence- and community-based support, practices, treatment, and recovery avenues to children, families, young adults, child-serving agencies, faith-based organizations, and community leaders.
Read more about SAMHSA’s National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day national programming here.
The Pandemic’s Impact on Youth Sports
We’ve seen the shift of life during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 take a heavy toll on youth and how they live their lives. We’ve heard the saying, ‘play like it’s your last game,’ but for the elementary and high school youth during that time, that really was the case. They had to play with the fear of knowing that their season could end at any point. They had to play with empty stands — without a student section or crowd cheering them on.
When 850 high school athletes participated in a study conducted by the University of Madison during the thick of the 2020 pandemic, results showed that 36% of those student-athletes felt moderate or severe anxiety and 65% reported symptoms of depression (McGuine, 2020).
Let’s fast forward two years — these kids are older. Some of their most formative years in their athletic careers were spent in fear without crowds. Now we are starting to see society adding crowds back into the picture, and kids don’t know how to handle the pressure of being watched. They have mental health issues that developed during the height of the pandemic, most of which haven’t been professionally addressed.
It’s an entirely new set of issues that we need to consider when assessing the well-being of today’s youth athletes and their mental health.
Youth Athletics & Mental Health
Research has shown several benefits of sport for children, such as a sense of belonging; physical skill, fitness, and leisure development and consistency; growth and maturation; self-concept and self-worth strengthening; moral development; and social competence (Hedstrom & Gould, 2004).
However, there are instances where mental health can be impacted when needs aren’t met. Youth sports are just as affected by racism, transphobia, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination and hate, further compounded by the same mental health stigma and mental toughness regimen we see in adult sports.
Thankfully, there are many different types of support we can provide for young athletes, such as for ourselves, as parents, as coaches, or as siblings. Read Marissa’s and Mikaela’s reflections on a few of these pillars below.
Motherhood & Coaching — Marissa
Reflecting back on my career as a collegiate volleyball player, there are issues regarding my mental health that I wish I would have addressed before my journey came to a close. Almost all of my struggles were born during my earliest days of playing sports (I’m talking junior high and high school). Most of my struggles have surfaced in a new way now that I’m a coach and a mother.
I have a few examples of this:
- I thought I had conquered an eating disorder almost a decade ago, but I found myself pregnant and triggered by watching my body change.
- I thought the pressure I felt on game day had gone away, but then found myself in charge of an entire team's success (and that brings on new levels of self-doubt).
- I thought my days of training to be the best of the best were over, but lo and behold, the comparison game continued as I navigated motherhood.
- I thought my negative self-thoughts of failure were behind me, but I still experience this today as a mother and a coach.
You see, if issues aren’t taken care of early on in a youth athlete’s journey, they will keep showing up in different ways. For me, this happened well into my collegiate career (just more intensely) and kept going into my adult life.
That is why, in my role as a coach and mother, I am now hyperaware of how important it is to take mental health seriously in youth sports. It’s my job, as well as the job of all coaches and parents, to be a safe space for our kids — to know how to spot the first signs of a struggle and to allow our kids to express how they’re feeling without the fear of shame. Advocating for resources is our obligation, not just a way to go the extra mile.
I want to raise and coach kids who can enjoy life to the fullest and have the tools and resources to know how to deal with mental health issues when they arise. Addressing the mental health crisis in the athletic community starts with youth, and it’s critical that authority figures do their part.
Siblings — Mikaela
When I was a young athlete, I was also a big sister 5 times over (yep, never a dull moment). I never really thought about the complicated reciprocity in these relationships until I was in college, far away from my siblings. Distance taught me that we don’t give kids enough credit for their strength, especially in situations where they’re hurting. I more clearly and readily recognized these moments of courage each time I came home because I was forced to see how fast my siblings grew up. I also caught myself in an assumption: due to their lack of responsibility, children don’t struggle with mental health.
When I look back at my own childhood and adolescence, I see the eye of my mental health storm. Things didn’t necessarily get easier in adulthood, I just learned what pain felt like and how to name it. When you’re a kid, you don’t have the language or lived experience to verbalize what you’re feeling. This is where empathy comes in, and with my siblings, it’s gone both ways. My sisters and brother are 22, 19, 15, 13, and 10 (I’m 24). They’re all at different stages of life, and it has been a blessing to watch them grow and learn. It’s also been really hard.
I’ve tried to recognize my own childhood struggles and experiences in them because I can better help them when I do. Not necessarily to compare stories, but to share language or perspectives that I’ve learned to use to describe similar thoughts, feelings, and experiences in my past. They do the same for me when I’m stuck in my head, seeing with the clarity of fresher eyes. My siblings have made me a more patient and compassionate sister, friend, teammate, and person. I so hope I’ve done the same for them.
As coaches, parents, siblings, or anyone who influences young athletes, we have to be better about connecting on this level. We also have to acknowledge youth as young people first, and young athletes second. Though it can feel like re-opening a wound, we must be willing to venture into uncertain and vulnerable experiences with our kids — especially when these spaces are hallmarks of our own past.
Let’s celebrate our resilience when we were young, and how resilient young people are now.
Let’s celebrate how connected the youth of the past and present truly are.
Let’s celebrate the power this connection has to catalyze change.
Sources
- Improving the mental and brain health of children and adolescents
- How to Start a Conversation With Kids
- McGuine Ph.D., T. A. (2020). The Impact of School Closures and Sport Cancellations on the Health of Wisconsin Adolescent Athletes. Madison; University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
- Hedstrom, R., & Gould, D. (2004). Research in youth sports: Critical issues status. Michigan: Michigan State University, 1–42.
