A sign of strength

Athletes Connected team members Uriel Zeitz and Kelly Pahle are highlighted in ‘A sign of strength’ by University of Michigan’s Office of Development.

Words of encouragement

As Zeitz points out, normalizing conversations about and increasing awareness of mental health in athletic spaces is crucial, especially when it comes to reducing the stigma surrounding physical injury and emotional pressure. And as someone who’s been on both sides of the table, he understands why student-athletes can be reluctant to get the help they need, but offers words of encouragement.“Ultimately, seeking help is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength,” Zeitz said. “There are so many different avenues you can take to support your mental health, so be proactive and prioritize what’s going to be best for you.”

Creating Balance Through Restorative Yoga

By Sierra Schmidt, U-M Women’s Swim & Dive alumna, with foreword by Emily Klueh, LMSW

It is well known and researched that the practice of mindfulness and meditation can have impacts on physical, mental, and emotional well-being and health. For athletes, we know that mindfulness can help slow down the system, differentiate between helpful vs. unhelpful thinking styles, and improve performance. A specific practice that combines mindfulness, meditation, and intentional relaxation is Restorative Yoga. Restorative Yoga helps to reduce tension, slow the mind, and bring an intentional calm to the body, something that is hard to come by for athletes, especially student-athletes who are balancing academic workload and the rigors of performance. At the University of Michigan, we are fortunate enough to support a variety of mindfulness and meditation practices and services. One such opportunity is provided by our Restorative Yoga certified clinicians. Restorative yoga is different from other types of yoga as it is focused on deliberate stillness. The sessions last roughly one hour and an individual will only move a handful of times into positions specifically created to release tension, enhance recovery, and slow the mind. Student-athletes find significant benefits attending these sessions. In fact, nearly all (94%) Michigan student-athletes who participated in Restorative Yoga in 2018-2019 reported experiencing at least one important benefit, with less stress, more happiness or better mood, and better sleep being the most commonly reported benefits.

Former U-M swimmer and six-time NCAA All-American Sierra Schmidt shares her experience engaging in restorative yoga:

I heard about restorative yoga from my therapist at the Sports Psychology office in Weidenbach Hall. At first I was very skeptical. How much of a difference could an hour of sitting in a dark room and being quiet do for a swimmer who is constantly moving from place to place all day long? But my therapist insisted that it was. Walking into my first session of restorative yoga was scary, to say the least. As someone who had never meditated in her whole life, and was used to moving, talking or just generally vibrating at all times, an hour sitting still and just existing was intimidating. The word yoga also gave me a sense of dread – did I want to do more exercise than I already did? At this point in my mental health journey, being alone with my thoughts was a terrifying concept, so, I challenged myself to go to a session of restorative yoga. I thought, “What could go wrong? You need to get out and try new things and not just hide in your apartment all the time!” So, I arrived at the South Performance Center with a lot of questions and a lot of dread. 

There were a few things I found out: first, some of my teammates were also trying it out. That gave me a lot of comfort seeing that I wasn’t just going to be alone with the leader or with people I didn’t know. Second, that it was not as scary as it sounded. Lastly, that I had found my new favorite pastime. All of the thoughts that were playing ping pong inside my head were suddenly resting for the moment. I could deconstruct my anxieties one by one, instead of facing the army that I usually had to challenge. The positions we had to go into were simple and comfortable positions. As someone who has seen ads for yoga before and seen the pretzel-like positions, you could say I was more than a bit surprised. 

“I realized that it was the most relaxed I had felt in a long time.”

For the hour session, there were only four positions. The positions were easy to get into and the focus was on mental relaxation, not pushing your body. When thinking of yoga, I think of the really complex positions that test your balance and flexibility. But I found that it was much simpler as the positions were comfortable! Before I knew it, I was so relaxed that I fell asleep. Once I heard the instructor walk up to me to wake me up, I realized that it was the most relaxed I had felt in a long time. The next morning, I didn’t need coffee to wake me up fully and I was more engaged with my team. Practice didn’t seem as daunting as it usually did. I noticed a huge change in my attitude and mental health, so I made a point to sign up for every session that I could. 

As I went home for a short time and reflected on my restorative yoga journey, I decided to explore more forms of meditation. I found more services to explore in my free time, and really got into the art of meditating and relaxing. I have found that some meditation programs are more intensive and try to engage me too much, whereas Restorative Yoga gave me a chance to unwind and relax so I could maximize my sleep. It also gave me a chance to reflect on the things that happened during my day, both good and bad. Since then I have felt more gratitude about my life. When things do go wrong, I have a space where I can take a deep breath and detangle my thoughts and feelings. 

As mentioned above by Sierra, athletes often are in a constant state of thinking, questioning, rushing, and doing. The athletics culture is often focused on ways to improve by striving to do more, not less. Thus, having a space to let go of stressors or organize thoughts without having more worries thrown in the mix is extremely important. It has been valuable for our athletes to experiment with and understand the benefits of creating a time and place to mentally unwind, build resilience, and promote recovery. We will continue to provide and push for new opportunities that help our student-athletes find a balance, experience growth, and build skills to navigate the intensity of being a student-athlete during their time here at U-M.

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About the Author

Sierra is a recent alum (’21) of the University of Michigan, and spent her four years at Michigan as a part of the Swimming and Diving Team. She is a six-time All American, a Big Ten Champion, and was a Captain of the 2020-2021 Team.

Schmidt is now involved in initiatives with USA Swimming and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to promote the excellence of collegiate athletes from around the U.S. She is currently residing in Phoenix, AZ where she is continuing her journey as a professional swimmer, while also pursuing her love of filmmaking.

Ian Miskelley: Celebrating His Life and Legacy One Year Later

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The passing of men’s swimming and diving student-athlete Ian Miskelley last September came as a shock to the University of Michigan community. One year later, the legacy Ian left behind is having a tremendous impact in a multitude of ways.

Ian’s family, friends, teammates and coaches have chosen to honor his memory through the Ian Miskelley Hope Scholarship, the Be Better Mental Wellness Center in his hometown of Holland, Mich., and an on-campus initiative — the Intercollegiate Athlete Network, or IAN — that aims to create a peer-to-peer network, expanding and deepening the level of mental health education.

IAN – Intercollegiate Athlete Network

Back in Ann Arbor, Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) mental health chair and current rowing senior Caroline McGee has done her own part to make sure Ian’s legacy lives on. McGee, along with the help of Director of Athletic Counseling Abigail Eiler, Athletes Connected Program Director Rachel Amity and members of the men’s swimming and diving team, have started a student-athlete-run organization called Intercollegiate Athlete Network, or IAN for short.

“Ian was always someone that would reach out to others,” McGee said. “It didn’t matter if it was his best friend or someone he just met, he would say, ‘Hey, you’re having a hard time. What can I do to help?’ and we want to remember that.”

The mission of IAN is to create a peer-to-peer network, expanding and deepening the level of mental health education provided to student-athletes, coaches, and all athletic department staff to include not only the common symptoms and indicators of mental disorders or illnesses, but also warning signs of potential mental health crisis.

“We want people on teams to reach out to other student-athletes across teams,” explained McGee. “We want people to develop connections to people they may not have talked to otherwise. We’re going through this incredible and truly amazing journey of being student-athletes, but it’s not easy. We all understand to some extent the grind of the classroom and sport. Who better to understand one another than ourselves? Leaning on each other is going to be really powerful.”

The Miskelleys never knew McGee or about her friendship with Ian, but she and the organization’s co-creators have the full support of the family.

“We are eternally grateful and are so impressed with Caroline,” said Miskelley. “She and Ian were friends, and we didn’t even know. To see her take it upon herself to do this in his honor is just so incredibly moving and we will be forever grateful.”

Though IAN is just starting on campus at Michigan, the hope is to move beyond the borders of Ann Arbor soon. “Everyone in the organization has so many ambitions to reach as many people as possible,” McGee explained. “We want Ian to be remembered and pass that along to people everywhere, not just to U-M or schools in the Big Ten. We want this to touch as many lives as possible so that everyone can feel like there’s a place for them and we’re all in this together as a massive community.”

 We want this to touch as many lives as possible so that everyone can feel like there’s a place for them and we’re all in this together as a massive community.”

“It would live out a part of who Ian was,” said McGee. “He was such an incredible person, and we’re trying to take his actions and attitude and keep that alive.”

Being a student-athlete at the University of Michigan was a dream come true for Ian Miskelley. With the help of his family, the Wolverine swimming and diving family, and his friends, his legacy will live on.

“The student-athletes at Michigan are such high-quality people,” said Miskelley. “To know Ian was able to be around a group of people like that, that high-caliber, that high-character, that fulfilled a lifelong dream for Ian.”

Read Ian’s Full Story on mgoblue.com

 

Athletes Connected on Michigan Radio’s Stateside

Athletes Connected program coordinator Rachel Amity appeared on Michigan Radio’s Stateside program to discuss how this year’s Olympics changed the conversation around athletes’ mental health.


By Stateside Staff

Today on Stateside (Friday, August 13, 2021), what the latest census data means for Michigan’s redistricting process. Also, how this year’s Olympics is changing the conversation around athletes’ mental health. And, Detroit Public Schools Community District’s universal mask requirement. Plus, beloved Detroit Tiger Miguel Cabrera nears a milestone.

Listen on michiganradio.org to the entire episode or just the portion of Rachel’s guest appearance here.

A game-changer for mental health: Sports icons open up

A pair of Athletes Connected team members were quoted and contributed to this Michigan Health Blog story that examines how sports icons like Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka could accelerate growing acceptance and decreasing stigma for mental health.


By Kara Gavin

They had the world’s spotlight shining on them.

They had trained for years for this moment.

Millions of fans waited to watch them compete and see them hoist a trophy or a gold medal once again.

Instead, they used that spotlight to say something few world-famous athletes have ever dared to say out loud: I need to step away from this competition and focus on my mental health.

And by doing so, gymnast Simone Biles, tennis player Naomi Osaka, basketball player Kevin Love and a handful of others at the pinnacle of their athletic careers have helped accelerate a trend that mental health experts at the University of Michigan say is long overdue.

“As more athletes speak out, it gives others permission to ask for help and normalizes mental health as part of the conversation,” –Stephanie Salazar, M.P.H.

By being open about what they were experiencing, and not “toughing it out” or stifling their feelings like generations of athletes have had to do, these icons did more than spare themselves injury or defeat.

Their public choice to seek help for depression, anxiety, overwhelming stress and other concerns could help athletes at all levels have the courage to seek professional help, and a break from competition if they need it.

U-M experts who work with athletes on mental health awareness and care had already started to see the shift toward this growing acceptance, even before the news broke from Wimbledon about Osaka or from the Tokyo Olympics about Biles.

Victor Hong, M.D., directs the psychiatric emergency department at University of Michigan Health, part of Michigan Medicine, and treats students including athletes at the University Health Service. He welcomes the newfound attention to the issue because of Biles and Osaka.

So does Will Heininger, who used to be an elite student athlete himself, playing football for U-M’s legendary Big Ten team while battling depression. Now, he’s the outreach coordinator for the Eisenberg Family Depression Center, and works with Athletes Connected, a collaborative program of Eisenberg Family Depression Center, U-M Athletics and the U-M School of Social Work.

Athletes Connected offers online resources for athletes anywhere, at any level. These include videos of athletes telling their own stories and sharing coping tips, signs and symptoms to look for regarding mental health, skills and strategies for mental wellness and information on how to find a mental health professional.

“As more athletes speak out, it gives others permission to ask for help and normalizes mental health as part of the conversation,” said Stephanie Salazar, M.P.H., who manages outreach programs for the center including Athletes Connected.

A generational effect helping to end stigma about mental health

All three U-M experts say the shift has been most striking as athletes from Generation Z have reached elite levels – including Biles and Osaka.

“The generational difference is one of the things that gives me the most hope about the future – for all of society, not just athletes,” said Heininger.  “The idea of ‘not knowing about depression or anxiety’ seems so foreign to them; they are consistently surprised, even shocked, to learn that ‘not knowing’ was the norm, very recently, as well as for all of history before that.”

“Athletes Connected has worked hard over the past seven years to break down the stigma of student-athlete help-seeking at U-M, and over that time, I’ve seen a huge shift in the ways that student-athletes talk about and champion the notion of taking care of their mental health as part of their overall wellness,” Salazar said. “Students are now taking the lead.”

But around the nation and world, young athletes often face resistance or denial from parents and coaches, who come from generations that didn’t know as much about mental health or talk about it.

“Younger people today are more open, and less stigma-driven, when it comes to discussing symptoms they’re experiencing,” Hong said. “But at the same time, they have more pressure on them than previous athletes, because of social media, increased academic demands and the rising cost of college that makes athletic scholarships even more important financially.

“They can feel like they’re letting everyone down if they don’t stick it out,” he said. “But at least they feel more empowered to talk about what they’re feeling.”

Younger people have grown up in a time when research has shown the role of risk factors such as family history, childhood trauma, poor sleep and acute stress in increasing the chances that a person could develop a mental health condition. There’s also a better understanding of how the adolescent and young-adult years are prime time for the onset of many mental health conditions, from depression to schizophrenia.

The importance of early recognition and effective treatment, and the availability of options including telehealth-based talk therapy and mobile apps for monitoring and managing moods, have all converged in recent years too.

The brain is just a body part

Coaches and parents who heed this research can actually help athletes harness current knowledge to boost their performance, said Heininger.

“The idea that an athlete – or anyone trying to perform at their peak – need not pay attention to their mental health is negligent,” he said. “It would be the equivalent of ignoring their physical health and saying ‘My body just is what it is. There’s no impact if I lift weights, train, and eat well.’ I think it says a lot about how far we’ve come that today’s athletes think about training their minds in the ways they do their bodies.”

Sending an athlete back into competition with a serious injury or concussion has become taboo, because of what we now know about the potential ill effects of stressing an already damaged joint or brain. But that transition hasn’t yet happened for mental health.

Heininger describes it to U-M student athletes this way:

  • You need your (blank) to function successfully as a student-athlete.
  • If your (blank) isn’t functioning properly, it will be more difficult to get to class, learn the material, perform on tests, succeed in your sport and so on.
  • If that blank was filled in with ‘hamstring,’ ‘back,’ ‘lungs’ or ‘foot’ or any body part, coaches and trainers would want to help you figure out why it’s not functioning properly. We’d be proud of you for noticing how it was impacting you. We’d also want to help you get better so you can achieve your many goals.
  • When the word that fills the blank is your brain, we believe you deserve the exact same kind of guidance, support and care you would get if it were any other part of your body.
The importance of reaching out about mental health concerns

When an athlete is having a mental health crisis – such as the anxiety attacks that led Love to suddenly leave a Cleveland Cavaliers game in 2018 – coaches and parents need to understand that this is not a time to tell them to “suck it up”, Hong said.

“Continued education for all coaching staff and families, as well as athletes, is so important, so that they understand what’s happening if a crisis occurs,” he said.

When he’s treating an athlete for a mental health emergency, from anxiety attacks to suicide attempts, he often finds himself doing that educating as a crash course. “We can reach them sometimes, but with some families, it can be really hard,” he said.

Heininger remembers being one of those student athletes who didn’t understand what he was experiencing, or what he should do about it, back when he was a defensive lineman for the Wolverines a decade ago.

“After my freshman year, it was my brain that was not working properly. Yet I had no idea that was the case because I’d never heard of depression or even anxiety at that point,” he said.

“Thanks to the incredible care, education, support and treatment I got at Michigan, I went from being a severely depressed 19-year-old who was unsure life was worth living, to a starting player, academic award winner, Michigan graduate, and most importantly, a well-balanced individual who felt ready to take on whatever life brought my way,” he continued. “I got there not because I knew everything. Not even close. But because I’d learned how to ask for help.”

Now, he finds himself hearing from athletes who heard his presentations. Months later, they contact him to get advice – not just for anxiety or depression, but for other emotional and mood changes they’ve noticed in themselves.

For instance, he tells the story of a young man who came to him because he was used to feeling like a “10” all the time, but had been experiencing agitation and anger and was feeling like a “7.”

“If someone doesn’t get help, that 7 can become a 6, and 5, and a 2, and a 1…and become very costly and very tragic, both for the individual, and for the team or organization,” Heininger said. “Instead of hiding it or being silent, he noticed and took action. And then excelled. That 7 went back towards the 10, instead of the other way.”

Hong adds that there is a special significance to the two world-class athletes who have spoken up recently and very visibly. “It is known that in the United States that those from racial minority groups are less likely to seek mental health care than white Americans, with stigma being a significant factor,” he said. “It is then even more notable that Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka, as faces of Black and Asian America, are speaking out, demonstrating that it is ok to admit to having a mental health issue.”

More progress needed to end mental health stigma

The negative comments on social media about Biles’ withdrawal and Osaka’s early defeat during the Olympics have shown there’s still a long way to go in raising awareness and increasing acceptance.

But a growing number of comments are from people defending the athletes for their bravery and cheering on their recovery. Biles even mentioned that Osaka’s decision to focus on her mental health helped inspire her own decision.

“The more people who are famous and come out publicly about their mental health, the better,” Hong said. “Backlash will happen, but somewhere out there we know there are young athletes who sought help because a role model spoke up, and we know that will continue.”


Read the rest of the story on the Michigan Health Blog.