Athlete Mental Health & Eating Disorders - a news & discussion thread

[Sylvia]

Recent IG post by Selmasiri Bella Larsen at her JGP event

Selmasiri Bella Larsen on Instagram: "Today i skated my first ever program at a JGP. That should be enough to make me extremely happy and proud. However, i had to read some really inacceptable comments (among other things about my body), and that was

selmasiri_bella on September 7, 2023: "Today i skated my first ever program at a JGP. That should be enough to make me extremely happy and proud. However, i had to read some re...".

www.instagram.com

So glad she has a strong mental health component to her training to comment openly on this.

Thanks - Larsen's and Gunnarsdóttir's Instagram posts are linked and discussed in the JGP thread (posts #164 & 164): https://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/threads/2023-24-isu-junior-grand-prix.110722/page-6#post-6465903

As well as Mark Hanretty's reaction during the JGP Istanbul livestream: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cw9cR_uo1-J/

 

[B.Cooper]

Milestone week for Rachael Flatt last week per her IG feed...

reflatt​

Adding some new letters to my name: PhD! Excited to share that I defended my dissertation this week! It’s been a long 5 years, and I’m so proud of the work I’ve done and the person I’ve become as a result of this experience #phdone​

"Evaluation of Adaptable and Dynamic Approaches for a Digital Intervention for Binge-Type Eating Disorders"

Rachael Flatt on Instagram: "Adding some new letters to my name: PhD! Excited to share that I defended my dissertation this week! It’s been a long 5 years, and I’m so proud of the work I’ve done and the person I’ve become as a result of this experien

139 likes, 22 comments - reflatt on October 1, 2023: "Adding some new letters to my name: PhD! Excited to share that I defended my dissertation this we..."

www.instagram.com

and her thanking her friends and family, her committee etc.

https://www.instagram.com/reflatt/?img_index=1

And she is at Duke Medicine doing her clinical psych internship

Rachael Flatt, MA | Duke Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

Undergraduate School Stanford University

psychiatry.duke.edu

amazing list of publications, academic presentations, invited talks and lectures

 

[Debbie S]

Congratulations to Rachael!

 

[PRlady]

Wow. Really impressed by what she’s accomplished.

 

[Sylvia]

Rachael Flatt recently was appointed to to U.S. Council for Athletes’ Health 5-member advisory panel:

Introducing the USCAH Advisory Panel » USCAH

Stay up-to-date on the latest USCAH happenings and upcoming events.

uscah.com

The U.S. Council for Athletes’ Health (USCAH) proudly introduces the newly established USCAH Advisory Panel. As USCAH continues to grow and expand its reach, the advisory panel brings an additional layer of knowledge and expertise to the forefront. Comprised of leaders and experts in various fields of athletic healthcare, including physicians, mental health professionals, athletic trainers, and compliance and risk management officers, the panel will offer guidance on emerging trends and best practices while actively participating in USCAH-sponsored educational initiatives and events.

Morgan Matthews has a Substack (she was inspired to start writing about skating topics after Montreal Worlds) - her latest:

Figure Skating In a Real Body

The language that figure skating coaches use to describe proper technique and to correct mistakes is infused with body hatred. From a young age, skaters are told to “stick in your butt” and “lengthen your legs” and “suck your stomach in.” By the time I was an adolescent, I could rattle off a...

morganmatthews.substack.com

Her personal story (April 18):

Healing a Broken Sport: My Story

There is a common adage among figure skating coaches that a figure skater must be talented, hardworking, and wealthy to become a champion. Talented, hardworking, and wealthy. Has the world ever been anything but an oyster for such a young person? The other thing that coaches like to mention...

morganmatthews.substack.com

 

[Sylvia]

I've since started a thread for Morgan Matthews' Substack writings (includes a link to her recent podcast conversation with "This Week in Skating"): https://www.fsuniverse.net/forum/threads/healing-a-broken-sport-my-story-by-morgan-matthews.111768/

USFS' latest Skater Spotlight article is on Rachael Flatt - by @Jayar (May 8; She "is currently a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill and is on track to earn her PhD in August."):

Flatt Closing in on PhD, Helps to Make Change in Sport | U.S. Figure Skating

www.usfigureskating.org

Excerpt:

In spite of some of her own experiences, Flatt does see progress in the sport, especially in the way of the athletes having honest and open discussions about their struggles.
“I look back on for my career – I was told many times in media training not to discuss physical injuries and now we're at a point where athletes are not only discussing their physical health but they're talking about these very important topics around mental health,” she pointed out. “The more we are having open conversations about mental health concerns to the degree that they're appropriate and people feel safe and open to share their experience helps them not to be brushed under a rug and stigmatizing them.”

 

[overedge]

I have to admit, I'm a little uncomfortable with USFS celebrating Rachael's openness about her mental and physical health challenges during her competitive career, when USFS had at least some involvement (e.g. media training) with reinforcing the norms that discouraged her from speaking up at the time. Perhaps they could also acknowledge their own role in those past situations.

 

[B.Cooper]

Considering the decade in which Flatt grew up in figure skating (2000-2010), TBH, it was still 'old school' PR training. Athletes never talked openly about injuries, unless it happened at a competition for all to see.

The mental health component for athletes really did not become part of the picture until the NCAA created a best practices manual for schools and their athletes in 2016. Mental health and wellness has evolved as a critical component in the past 8 years or so, but figure skating, for the longest time, has been one of those sports that has so much politics involved that if an athlete mentions a health and wellness issue, they can fall out of favor quickly. The collective effort to keep a healthy athlete in the sport of skating was not always the priority of the federation. I think that is changing.....


The NBA instituted a mental health and wellness program in 2018, and the NFL required that all teams have a mental health professional on staff in 2019. MLB and the NHL have all developed similar resources to both major league, minor league and farm team athletes in the past 4-5 years. The NCAA has continued to refine their mental health programs and many schools now have routine mandatory check ins with all their athletes.


I suspect the 'watershed' moment for professional athletes revolved around a number of very high profile professional athletes coming forward with their individual stories in the past 5 or 6 years or so to list a few...Michael Phelps and his discussions about his depression, Naomi Osaka and her challenges as a professional tennis player, Ben Simmons struggle with fulfilling his contract with the Philadelphia 76ers and eventually admitting that his mental health was compromising his ability to play basketball, and then of course, the start of the pandemic in early 2020, and its contributions to the complete overhaul of athletes' training schedules and in preparation for the Olympics and as well as many other sports....so many of these athletes define themselves by what they do ...day in and day out, and for many of them, their lives revolve around training and competing. With the world on shut down for an extended period of time, self reflection and self evaluation of the role sports plays in the lives of these individuals was met head on. In the past few years since the pandemic, I think there has been an outpouring of stories from athletes about their mental health challenges and probably bc of the pandemic, I think it has become more acceptable to discuss these issues more openly not just for athletes, but for pretty much everyone.

Going back to the time frame when Flatt competed and many decades prior, if your comments were not 'trained', I would hazard a guess that a skater's 'worth' was reconsidered by USFS if they would 'color outside the lines', so to speak. Injuries and mental health discussions just did not happen.

Flatt, to the best of my knowledge in her media coverage, has never discussed the politics of her experiences while a competitive athlete, and I suspect that is a closed chapter in her book. In the article linked above, Flatt acknowledges that she did try to work through years of injuries, but at the time, the federation and the USOPC were not really equipped to handle the mental health component for any athlete. Flatt has has obviously learned from her experiences, and obviously has put those experiences to good use in paying it forward by the work she has pursued while at Stanford, Chapel Hill and now at Duke Medicine. She is contributing on a whole new level, from her work on the USOPC mental health task force as well as her contributions at USFS and her current work at Duke and UNC. Looking forward to watching her career continue to blossom.