Sleeping Giants in Mental Healthcare

SLEEPING GIANT

“One that has great but unrealized or newly emerging power”

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Sports coaches are sleeping giants in mental healthcare. With recognition and support as alternative mental health service providers, they could help reduce the overprescribing of psychiatric drugs, particularly when the drugs are prescribed for normal mental health challenges such as performance anxiety. 

Many people have been promoting the physical and mental health benefits of sport for decades. David Carmichael, for example, who developed the Sport for Mental Health information portal in 2025, published the book Building a Solid Foundation for Sporting Success: A Guide for Parents of Young children in 1994 that describes the importance of putting winning into perspective, long-term athlete development and building self-esteem through sport.

EXCERPTS from 1994 guide for parents of young children

Winning favours Early Maturing Children

Children are not little adults. Young superstars will probably not be the best athletes as adults. Potential superstars are often cut from teams as children or sit on the bench. There are many problems if programs overemphasize the importance of winning.

 Sports programs should be designed to build self-esteem. Without positive feelings of self-worth, athletes will have difficulty handling success and failure. With children, self-esteem is most effectively developed if winning is de-emphasized. Too much formal competition, where winning is the most important thing, favours early developers. Children do not have specialized physiological capacities. Early maturing children are usually the strongest, fastest, and best distance runners. Most early maturing children have more muscle tissue, longer bones, greater strength, and exhibit greater coordination than late maturing children. Early maturing children usually occupy starting positions on competitive sport teams while late maturers get cut, sit on the bench or, in less structured sport programs, are picked last.

It is, however, critical for you to understand that children who are late maturers are not necessarily going to be poorer athletes in the future. Late maturing children, by virtue of their longer growth period, tend to attain an average adult height greater than those who mature early. A child who starts to develop strength before the age of twelve has a definite advantage in prepubescent sport. However, when late maturers experience their growth spurt, which usually occurs between thirteen and sixteen years of age, they may become relatively stronger and more athletically developed. At this stage, the early maturer, who achieved a great deal of success during prepubescence, may have difficulty coping with athletic failure. This is a serious problem. The self-esteem of the early maturing child may depend largely on success in that particular sport. As a result, he or she may have great difficulty coping with failure, and may eventually drop out of that sport and physical activity all together. The transition from superstar to physical inactivity would probably have a negative impact on her or his self-esteem.

The foundation is represented in three stages: Multi-Skill Development, Introduction to Competition and Organized Competition. If, after a child has been exposed to different sports, he or she communicates the desire to become proficient in a particular sport, the process of specialization can be initiated, leading to sport specific training as youth and adults, resulting in high performance. The foundation building process should be the same for every child, regardless of gender, socioeconomic status or ability. If a child does not have the potential or the desire to be a high performance athlete, a solid foundation will help her or him feel competent participating in a variety of physical activities and recreational sports for life; a great way to remain active and stay healthy.

The process of developing talent in sport is long term, particularly for sports where athletes peak in performance after twenty years of age. For sports where athletes are peaked at an international level as children, in late prepubescence or adolescence, this model is more difficult to apply. If your child specializes at a young age in one of those sports, such as women’s gymnastics, try to ensure that she or he is not only developing athletic skills, but is developing other life skills, such as communication, decision-making and problem solving, that will help her or him during adolescence and into adulthood.

If the foundation building process is not followed, many children may have difficulty experience success in physical activities and sports. For example, a child will have a good chance of experiencing success in an organized soccer league if he or she has learned how to kick a ball properly before the first league game. In some cases, however, children are asked to join a sports team on one evening, and expected to play a formalized game the next night without any prior skill training. In some leagues, administrators and coaches do not schedule practices because of the crowded competitive schedule, yet practices are essential for young children who are acquiring skills in order to feel competent in a particular sport. Children learn skills most effectively in a non-stressful, such as a practice setting. A competitive environment is often quite stressful for a child.

If children have poor motor skills for a sport, they will probably feel incompetent and have low self-esteem in that environment.  

 The Sportself

 There is little doubt that sport experiences can have a tremendous impact on self-esteem. Positive experiences can build self-esteem and help children develop a solid foundation for an active life. Too many negative experiences can destroy self-esteem, which may cause a child to withdraw from sport and physical activity all together. Sport programs for children should be designed to build self-esteem.

 By emphasizing the sportself with young children, you will be helping them feel good about the whole self when they get older.

 The physical self appears to be very important to young children. When you hear children say “watch me”, they are often trying to show you a physical skill they have just learned, such as climbing, jumping, rolling, catching, throwing, batting, or swimming. When young children are asked to identify a physical activity that they would like to be good at, they almost always name a sport. It may be a sport that they have watched on television, or it may be a sport that a friend, sibling, or relative has participated.

 A positive physical self can be developed through sport. If a sports program is structured so children are developing skills, they will probably feel good about their physical self.

 According to Harold Minden, a psychologist and author of Two Hugs for Survival: Strategies for Effective Parenting, children with low self-esteem often appear to be:

• Depressed 
• Withdrawn
• Introverted
• Dependent
• Anxious
• Distracted
• Insecure
• Disrespectful
• Distrustful
• Envious
• Self-conscious
• Aggressive

If children are not feeling good about themselves at a young age, it may be very difficult for them to feel good about themselves during their developing years and as adults. There are strong relationships between low self-esteem and antisocial behaviours such as substance abuse, violence and crime.