Colby's chapter of the Hope Happens Here club teamed up with the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) for Mental Health Awareness Week.  On Thursday April 1, the group hosted an open discussion featuring a student-athlete panel willing to share their stories around Mental Health and the negative stigma surrounding the topic, specifically in the world of athletics.

"It's been a tough year." Loren Bush's words echoed throughout the Ostrove auditorium.
 
Bush, a clinical psychologist with a focus in sport and performance psychology, addressed the audience virtually from his computer Thursday night to guide the conversation around mental health.  "Juggling the constraint of being a full-time student-athlete can be difficult… participating in collegiate sports is typically a good and healthy activity for one's mental health, but this past year, it has been a lot more work and a lot less play. It's been a tough year."

Bush's words resonated with everyone in the room, especially the four student-athletes sitting on the Ostrove stage. Annika Hogan '24 (women's squash), Maddie Fisher '23 (women's soccer), Matthew Hersch '22 (football), and Wallace Tucker '21 (men's basketball) served as the student panel, volunteering their personal challenges with mental health, fears, struggles, and pathways to find success.  Each one was very different from the other, coming from different teams and different class years, but despite their differences, each of them were willing to share their stories.
 
In response to being asked why they were interested in being part of the Mental Health Awareness Week student-athlete panel, each responded with a similar sentiment: mental health is not always an easy or comfortable thing to talk about, but it is a necessary to talk about. "I come across as a very happy person," shared Hogan, "but I wanted to show that mental health isn't always about walking with your head down and pushing through a challenge."  Hogan added, "People who are always smiley and happy sometimes need help too, even if it doesn't look like it, anybody could be struggling."
 
The panelists touched on how the pandemic specifically has impacted their mental health, and for many of them, forced them to confront their patterns and create new ones. Fisher said "Quarantine stripped away anything that I would use as a distraction from how I was feeling…I had a lot more time on my hands and it forced me to lean into my anxiety and face it head on."
 

Tucker shared a similar story, noting that he didn't realize how much his relationships and seeing other people affected his wellbeing. "I took for granted being able to simply see people.  Isolation gave me space to understand how important relationships are to me and how much they help with managing my mental health."
 
"We all go through peaks and valleys," shared Hersch. "When you are in your low points, you have to remember that it will get better, that some days will be better than others, and you have to search for ways to turn it around." Hersch continued, "This comes out in sports a lot, when you have a bad day on the field it's a lot harder to forget… bad plays stick with us.  What we all need to remember is that we are all good players.  None of us would be here if we weren't. We are all good students.  None of us we be at Colby if we weren't. We are also good people… none of us would be here if we weren't."
 
"Showing emotion isn't a weakness, talking about how you feel makes you strong!"
 
The panel circled back to the importance of normalizing conversations regarding mental health and eliminating any negative connotations with the subject. "In the past I felt like there was a wall of me feeling like a burden if I needed help," shared Hogan.  "But showing emotion isn't a weakness, talking about how you feel makes you strong, and that is a switch that I am proud to be a part of."
 
Fisher agreed, "As a student-athlete it feels like we have to strive for perfection all the time, both on the field and in the classroom, but it is impossible to be that always. It is okay to not be okay and I think having more conversations about mental health will make that clearer."
 
"I hope that there will be conversations that come out of today, I hope it is a chain reaction," said Tucker. "This event is a great starting point, but the real progress comes from changed behavior and perception.  What really matters is what people do next."