Mental Health among Elite Athletes
Many athletes have recently come out as having mental health issues. If you interested in exploring this topic, the first question you need to ask is whether mental illnesses are over represented in populations of elite athletes - Are there more or less athletes with mental health issues than in the general population - and whether the types of mental illnesses are different from the general population. These questions may, for ethical reasons be difficult to ascertain, which is something you need to take into account when designing your research question. If you have the right connections to athletic communities you could ask questions like whether specific mental illnesses (eg ADHD) are more common in athletes, but this still has ethical concerns and is probably a better IRP than PIP question. A PIP question in this area may look at the effect of COVID on atheltes' mental health, which should be less (but still very) ethically complex.
For female athletes, especially, underlying mental health issues can be compounded by pressure to conform to specific body stereotypes, especially in dance related sports (gymnastics, skating, synchronised swimming), sports that sort athletes by weight (weight lifting, martial arts, rowing) and endurance sports (marathon, cycling, long distance swimming). If these issues interest you, you could choose to
These articles will introduce you to some of the issues
- https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/blog/details/1437/athletes-get-real-about-mental-health
- https://sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40798-019-0220-1#:~:text=Risk%20Factors%20for%20Mental%20Ill,disorders%20%5B2%2C%203%5D.
- http://www.acsep.org.au/content/Document/Coronavirus%20(COVID-19)/Athlete_Mental_Health_COVID-19.pdf
For female athletes, especially, underlying mental health issues can be compounded by pressure to conform to specific body stereotypes, especially in dance related sports (gymnastics, skating, synchronised swimming), sports that sort athletes by weight (weight lifting, martial arts, rowing) and endurance sports (marathon, cycling, long distance swimming). If these issues interest you, you could choose to
- interview women with different body types with in a specific sporting group
- compare the body image or body image conversions (eg in a forum situation) of women engaged in different types of sports,
- discover which places are 'danger zones' for negative discussions around body image
- focus on three or four ways athletes cope with body image issues, especially the kinds of resilience developed to cope with such a high pressure environment
These articles will introduce you to some of the issues