Abstracts Health Sciences

NCAA DI Assistant Coaches' Understanding of Mental Performance and Mental Health Services

by Heather Hill

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has acknowledged the importance of providing student-athletes with psychological services throughout their athletic careers (NCAA, n.d.). Two vital services for student-athletes are mental performance services that are focused on sport-related issues and mental health services that are centered around personal issues (Sudano & Miles, 2017). Previous literature around mental performance and mental health services has not distinguished between them, making it difficult to understand key stakeholders’ perceptions and knowledge of both mental performance and mental health services. Assistant coaches play an important role in NCAA athletic departments and spend substantial amounts of time connecting and working with student-athletes (Cote & Gilbert, 2009), yet no research to date has examined their knowledge of mental performance and mental health services. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to learn about NCAA DI assistant coaches’ understanding of mental performance and mental health services. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 NCAA DI assistant coaches employed at universities with at least one Mental Performance Consultant and one Licensed Mental Health Provider. Thematic analysis procedures (Braun & Clarke, 2019) were used to analyze the interviews, and five themes were constructed: (1) day-to-day responsibilities of the assistant coach, (2) needing mental performance and mental health services, (3) factors influencing understanding of mental performance and mental health services, (4) factors impacting student-athlete utilization of mental performance and mental health services, and (5) confusion between mental performance and mental health services. Practical implications for the NCAA, MPCs, LMHPs, and coaches will be discussed.