If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing “988,” or the Crisis Text Line by texting “HOME” to 741741.
In the weeks after Stanford University soccer goalie Katie Meyer, 22, died by suicide last March, her grieving teammates were inseparable even when not training.
Coaches adjusted practices to give the athletes time and space to make sense of losing their friend and team captain. They offered to cancel the spring season, but the players declined, said Melissa Charloe, who started as a Stanford assistant women’s soccer coach the day Meyer died.
“It’s hard because there’s no playbook on how to do this,” Charloe said.
No playbook exists because, until recently, it was relatively uncommon for student-athletes to die by suicide. But at least five NCAA athletes, including Meyer, ended their lives in a two-month period last year. And a 2021 NCAA poll released in May found that student-athletes say they are experiencing more mental health concerns, anxiety, and depression than they reported in surveys conducted before the covid-19 pandemic took hold in 2020.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death on college campuses. And despite the overall rise in mental health concerns there, universities have been caught off guard when student-athletes have died by suicide. Traditionally, sports psychologists focused on mental health as it related to performance on the field. Their goal was to help athletes improve physically — jump higher, run faster — not navigate mental health crises, largely because of a misperception that college athletes were less susceptible to mental health concerns.
What little research exists about student athletes and men …