Elite athletes more likely to experience mental health disorders: U of T study

.....Poucher recently published a paper in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise that explores the prevalence of symptoms of common mental disorders among elite Canadian athletes.  She found that as many as 41.4 per cent of Canadian national team athletes – those training for Tokyo 2020 – met the cut-off criteria as proposed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5) for depression, anxiety and/or an eating disorder. That’s compared to an estimated 10 per cent of Canadians in general who report a mental disorder in a given 12 month period, according to the study.

Specifically, 31.7 per cent of athletes reported symptoms of depression, 18.8 per cent reported symptoms of moderate (12.9 per cent) to severe (5.9 per cent) general anxiety and 8.6 per cent reported scores indicating a high risk of an eating disorder.....

.....Another unexpected finding, according to Poucher, was that athletes who had made the Olympic team had more symptoms of depression prior to the Games.“We hear a lot about post-Olympic depression, but I have not seen any research on mental health prior to the Olympics,” she says. “I think the assumption is that people are happy they made the team.”.....

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Bethany`s Notes: There is a prevalence of of symptoms that meet the criteria for mental health disorders among elite athletes based on the article recently published. Also, note the last paragraph...athletes who made the Olympics had more symptoms of depression prior to the Games....usually we think about post Olympic depression but it appears there is a lot of pre-Olympic depression as well