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It was the 2020 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo, Japan and Simone Biles was warming up on the vault and was continuously bailing on tricks that would have seemed easy for her to a pedestrian’s eye.  

The 30 Olympic/World Champion medal athlete pulled herself from the competition due to having the mental block called the “twisties” which leads to having no awareness of bodily control while in the air and can cause severe injuries. 

Although there was some support for Biles when she withdrew at the olympics, the media was filled with people scrutinizing her and telling her she let down her country. People were saying things to her about being “selfish”, “a sociopath”, “a shame to the country”, and even “a selfish, childish national embarrassment.”  

Biles is not the only pro athlete that has suffered from scrutiny due to mental health, tennis star Naomi Osaka was also scrutinized for pulling out of the French Open and Aly Raismen was facing public backlash when opening up about sexual trauma.  

Among all levels of athletics, sports come with stressors that can affect athletes in all sorts of various ways. 

“Unlike many other sports where you have teammates to uplift you if things get difficult, you are completely alone and have several other people relying on you to succeed,” Grand View University Cross Country senior Seth Diser said. Performance anxiety and the feeling of fitting into a new environment are two common stressors that college athletes, especially here at GVU, experience. All levels of competition, from junior high to pro, athletes are competing for performance time, different coaching styles, injury recovery and pressures coming either internally or externally.  

Starting this past fall, athletes have the opportunity to download the Wellness U app to help with any common stressors in their lives and any other mental health assistance needed. This app is focused towards giving each athlete a personalized education area for any mental health or life concerns.  

“The app is a great resource for students especially since we can only see the counselor five times before transferring to someone else. It really allows us athletes to get helpful tools and resources especially since some of us are constantly short on time,” said Paxton Monkelien, junior on the GVU dance team.  

Ken Yeager from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at The Ohio State University helped with developing the science behind the app to ensure that all of the mental health support provided is all evidence-based. Yeager’s base research follows psychological trauma, crisis intervention, victim of crime and substance use disorders. He also works for the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) as part of the Program for Substance Abuse.  

When a student first downloads Wellness U, they will initially need to complete a long self-assessment, which will make the app and its resources personalized to each student. This helps each student focus on the main concerns that may be affecting their academic or athletic performances negatively. 

Although the stigma for mental health is being slowly removed within society, there is still a large portion of the population that feels alone when it comes to their mental health, so they don’t seek treatment.  

However, no matter what the stressor is, it is far from the truth of each person being alone when looking at statistics. According to the Wellness U website (wellnessu.info), 31% of students said anxiety negatively impacts their academics, 27% of student-athletes reported having anxiety and only 10% find resources to help. Furthermore, 64% of students dropout of college due to mental health, 75% of lifetime mental health issues begin at 24, and those ages 10 to 24 take up around 10% of all suicides.  

Coaches will get sent a full report that will cover what main factors the team is dealing with and how to implement strategies into practice that will help the team overall. Coaches can have their athletes complete the main assessment twice within a season to see how the team is developing as different factors of their sport come up compared to the beginning of the season.  

“We thought, what could we do to make this better? We realized that a lot of those thoughts and stressors are not from them personally but instead the culture,” said Morgan Koth, CEO of Accentus Health (company that developed Wellness U). “We give these reports to the coaches and the administration so that they know what’s happening. Then from there we give the coaches talking points to use so that athletes don’t have to feel like they need to go straight to their coach or a counselor.” 

These reports include the current state of the team’s wellness, topics the athletes are curious about, areas of success within the team, areas of opportunities, and items to elevate the team. 

“Not everyone talks to campus counselors. Athletes may not trust them because they don’t look  like them, sound like them, they were never an athlete so how do they know what they are going  through?” Koth said. 

Within the app, all users have access to a wide variety of resources that can assist with the specified stressors from the assessment, as well as more. Unlike the current TeleHealth app that is also being used at GVU, the resources are free to use all the time and as many times as needed. 

“If you go to Campus Help (within the app) you can find resources for self harm,  LBGTQ+, addiction, and even links to on campus resources. Not everyone feels comfortable going to a counselor so having resources like this is important,” Koth said. 

These resources include sections that focus on learning about the stressors that affect us daily, a practice tab that can help locate and understand triggers for each athlete, videos to help work through triggers and coping techniques, as well as a fitness and wellness articles tab.  

Certain teams on campus have implemented this app into their program to help each athlete on the team, whether they are suffering from clinical depression to financial stress. Although here at GVU the app is used for mainly athletics on campus, any student or athlete is able to download the app and use any of its resources. 

Mental health is the one thing that everyone tells themselves they want to work on but do not know how to start the process of self-love. The most important thing to start learning about your own mental health is to find the resources that work for you personally. Wellness U has a wide variety that can work for everyone and anyone that has different mental health needs and priorities.