Former U-M swimmer and Athletes Connected representative Kally Fayhee and U-M athletics counselor Barb Hansen contributed quotes to a story written by the NCAA for the New York Times. Below is an excerpt.

Pressures can quickly accumulate for young people as they transition from home and high school to life as college students.

New academic and personal challenges often coincide with separation from friends and family. And in that time of change — one that many parents might assume is defined by discovery and optimism — an unexpected obstacle can emerge, often unnoticed: an issue with mental health. It can reveal itself in the form of intense anxiety before a test or competition, changes in eating habits that can morph into an eating disorder, or feelings of depression that can hamper young people’s ability to manage the day-to-day responsibilities of their new world.

It’s now recognized as a common challenge: An estimated one in five adults will face a mental health condition each year, and the majority of those conditions develop by age 24. But while students and student-athletes are affected equally, the competitive nature of sports also has engendered an attitude that can spur some to hide their problem. Seeking help in an athlete’s world might be considered a sign of weakness. Rather than speaking with someone or seeking help, some athletes believe they should simply tough it out.

The stories of just a few real-life challenges faced by three student-athletes at California State University, Monterey Bay, make the reality clear: unexpected panic attacks, a best friend overdosing on drugs, two knee surgeries.

As athletes, they add regular practices, workouts and travel for games. All of it comes with the constant strain to succeed, not only for the future — “can I make it pro?” — but for the past sacrifices parents and coaches made along the way and the present pressures of living up to expectations.

In recent years, coaches and athletic staff have begun recognizing the importance of understanding and supporting student-athlete mental wellness. Guided by new resources, such as Mental Health Best Practices, a guide published by the NCAA’s Sport Science Institute in 2016, schools are devoting more education and resources to mental health well-being. Rather than hide from stigma, students and student-athletes are speaking up, seeking help and taking advantage of ever-stronger support systems on campus.

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Read the full story at Land of 10

By Rachel Lenzi

Jim Harbaugh is a tough critic.

Not just of his football team at Michigan, but also of Michigan’s athletes. But not when they’re on the field or on the court. Instead, Harbaugh took aim at their dancing and musical talents.

Tuesday night at the University of Michigan’s Power Center for the Performing Arts, Michigan’s third-year football coach and his wife, Sarah, were judges for Michigan’s Mock Rock, an annual performance event featuring Michigan athletes that’s part lip-sync, part talent contest and part dance-off.

And the Harbaughs got interactive. They judged the Michigan hockey team’s performance, complete with glittery tights and a choreographed dance routine to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Harbaugh gave the hockey team an eight out of maximum 10 points.

“Their precision was off,” Harbaugh quipped.

At one point in the night, Harbaugh got up from the judges’ table and pumped his fists to One Direction’s 2011 hit song “What Makes You Beautiful,” at the urging of a member of the Michigan women’s rowing team.

“I loved it when she came out here and danced with Jim,” Sarah Harbaugh said after the performance. “That was embarrassing.”

But Mock Rock didn’t just showcase Harbaugh. Mock Rock showcases Michigan’s athletes in an artistic realm — hockey player Cooper Marody serenaded an audience member to an acoustic ballad, while Michigan’s women’s lacrosse team performed a choreographed dance routine to a hip-hop mix that included music by Bruno Mars, DMX and House of Pain.

Furthermore, Mock Rock has a charitable impact in the Ann Arbor community. Michigan’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee has hosted Mock Rock since 1999, and this year, Mock Rock addressed the topic of mental health. The beneficiary of this year’s event, Fresh Start Clubhouse, is an Ann Arbor-area organization that focuses on wellness recovery within a community structure, for adults who have mental illnesses, such as depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

“We help people get back to work, go to school and live meaningful lives,” Fresh Start director Summer Berman told the audience. “To do the things that everybody here wants to be able to do. We believe in the philosophy that everybody needs to belong.

“The sense of mattering, and that you are a part of something bigger than yourself, is what we’re really about.”

Drake Johnson, who plays football and runs track at Michigan, co-hosted Mock Rock with Emily Klueh, a clinical athletic counselor and a program coordinator for Athletes Connected, a mental-health initiative involving Michigan’s student-athletes. Johnson saw a value addressing mental health during an otherwise relaxed event.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Barb Hansen, U-M athletics counselor who contributes overall development and implementation of the Athletes Connected project, was interviewed by Channel 4 News about college students and depression.

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Read the original column from The Daily Pennsylvanian

By Laine Higgins

Being a student-athlete is hard. Plain and simple.

And when it comes to mental health, student-athletes are not necessarily more at risk than their peers. Research done at the University of Washington by Dr. Ashmin Rao has shown that incidence rates of anxiety and depression tend to be lower among student-athletes than non-athletes.

“Athletes actually have a ton of social support,” he said. “They have a lot of resources, trainers, coaches and people who keep their eyes on them at all times. So they’re a more monitored group.”

Despite that support, athletes are far less likely to seek out help. A 2014 study done at the University of Michigan School of Public Health with a random sampling of 7,000 students from nine universities found that only 10 percent of student-athletes with depression or anxiety took advantage of mental health resources, whereas 30 percent of non-athletes utilized care.

This is a problem. And it’s a problem that Penn can and should address.

Under the tutelage of athletic director Grace Calhoun, some improvements have already been made. During the 2014-15 academic year, all of Penn’s coaches underwent “ICARE” (Inquire. Connect. Acknowledge. Respond. Explore.) training. It’s a crash course designed by Counseling and Psychological Services for Penn faculty and students to identify the signs and symptoms of mental health issues.

“We’re trying to be more proactive with identifying signs with students who might be presenting in a certain way so we can get out in front of it and hopefully catching things before they escalate,” Calhoun said.

Sherryta Freeman was also brought on in July 2015 as senior associate athletic director to oversee student-athlete development, including mental health issues.

But that is not enough.

A good starting point would be to mimic the Athletes Connected program at the University of Michigan and give Penn student-athletes a platform for discussion. Started in 2014 as a partnership between the School of Public Health, the Depression Center and the Athletic Department with funding from a grant from the NCAA, Athletes Connected is a specialized program aimed at reducing stigma, promoting help seeking and raising awareness.

“One of our big goals is to create conversation of mental health among our student-athletes because there is a huge stigma surrounding helping student-athletes,” said Emily Brunemann, a former captain of the women’s swim team at Michigan and program coordinator of Athletes Connected. “There is a tough-it-out mentality, they’re supposed to be strong, they’re supposed to do it by themselves and gain success.”

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Original Story from ViceSports.com

By B. David Zarley

Adam Kern couldn’t sleep.

He was having a difficult freshman year at the University of Michigan, in his hometown of Ann Arbor. There had been the death of a family member, plus the usual oscillation between thrilling freedom and total unmoored terror that’s intrinsic to the college experience. And then there were the academic pressures, and the additional onus of being a student-athlete on the Wolverines track and cross country teams. While his twin brother, Nick, seemed to excel, by spring track season Adam was an athlete on the bubble. His struggles were starkly clear to him, and his failings measured empirically on stopwatches and result sheets. The generalized anxiety that he had since childhood—an anxiety that might manifest in music being stuck in his head or a complete freeze after the first page of a test; an anxiety that had led Adam to ask his parents for a therapist in fourth grade—just seemed to make everything worse. There was no let-up.

Every race took on the proportions of life and death; for Adam, being an athlete and being himself seemed one and the same, and as he confronted the possible end of his athletic career, a host of other frightening questions opened in turn. In April 2011, he ran the 5,000-meter race at Michigan State’s Spartan Invitational unattached—that is, for himself, not the university.

“To me, it was another chance to prove myself, that I was worthy to have a roster spot,” Adam says in the lobby of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

Read the entire story on ViceSports.com.