NCAA DI Student-Athletes' Understanding of and Attitudes Toward Mental Performance Services

Abstract

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division (DI) student-athletes have high physical and psychological demands related to their sport. To address these demands, the NCAA has focused on disseminating information and advocating for more resources to help student-athletes improve their psychological well-being. However, most, if not all the information provided by the NCAA has focused on mental health resources, with little discussion about mental performance services. In fact, in the 2023 Transformational Committee report did not list mental performance services as a key resource for student-athletes, meaning that student-athletes likely have limited knowledge about the services or access to a mental performance consultant (MPC) that could help them with various performance challenges. Furthermore, few, if any qualitative studies examine student-athletes to understand what they know and how they feel about these services. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to learn about NCAA DI student-athletes' understanding of and attitudes toward mental performance services. Semi-structured one-one-one interviews were conducted with nine NCAA DI student-athletes (6 females, 3 males). Thematic analysis procedures were followed, and two themes were constructed: (a) knowledge of services and characteristics desired of professionals, and (b) a general unawareness of mental performance services. In response to these results and recent NCAA statements, it is suggested that the NCAA consider disseminating more resources and information about mental performance services and advocate for hiring a professional on a full-time, part-time, or contracted basis to assist in meeting student-athlete mental performance needs.