Student-athlete disclosures of psychological distress: Exploring the experiences of university coaches and athletes
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Student-athletes are suggested to be an at-risk population for experiencing psychological distress, and coaches have been identified as support providers for distressed athletes. However, little is known about the interactions between student-athletes and their coaches when athletes disclose psychological distress. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to explore the experiences of student-athletes disclosing psychological distress to university coaches. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 student-athletes (2 male, 13 female; Mage = 24.5 years) and 15 university coaches (11 male, 4 female; Mage = 41.9 years). Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Results indicated that perceived barriers (emphasis on athlete toughness, power of coaches, athlete’s position on a team, poor visibility of distress, and previous negative experiences with disclosure) discouraged student-athletes from disclosing distress and suggest that barriers may be overcome by coaches fostering supportive team cultures. Strategies for coaches to establish supportive team cultures were identified, such as building diverse coaching staff, using nondiscriminatory language, and role-modeling desired behaviors. Based on the findings, guidelines are provided for effective coach support following disclosure. This research suggests that coaches have the potential to positively influence student-athletes’ disclosures of psychological distress and facilitate the process of athletes seeking help; however, clearer boundaries need to be established to govern the appropriate role of coaches in supporting psychologically distressed student-athletes. Lay Summary We examined experiences of student-athlete disclosures of psychological distress to university coaches. Barriers, such as previous negative experiences with disclosure, perceptions of athlete toughness, and the athlete’s position on the team, prevented athletes from disclosing distress. Strategies for coaches to create cultures that support athlete help-seeking behaviors are presented.Implications for Practice:As a frontline preventative measure in supporting the psychological well-being of student-athletes, coaches should establish team cultures that address perceived barriers to disclosure and encourage athlete help seeking behaviors. Coaches may foster desired team cultures by applying recommendations made by the present research, such as adopting a holistic coaching philosophy, speaking openly with athletes about psychological distress, and providing transparent selection criteria.When working with psychologically distressed student-athletes, coaches should engage in immediate, short-, and long-term support practices inclusive of responding supportively to athletes’ initial disclosures, assisting athletes in developing plans for managing their distress, and maintaining consistent communication and engagement with the athlete throughout the recovery process.Coaches should prioritize the development of coach-athlete relationships founded on trust and bidirectional communication with student-athletes to facilitate student-athletes’ willingness and abilities to disclose distress and access early support.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it