When I started working as a sports psychologist in the eighties, it was written that athletes displayed well-balanced personalities. That seems like a geological era ago. At that time, there were far fewer athletes, less frequent competitions, less pressing competitive stress, less public exposure of athletes, and fewer sponsors in their lives. This meant that on the shoulders of the athletes there were fewer expectations coming from the social and sporting environment, less pressure to achieve perfectionism and continuous winning results.
Athletes were socially more free and less constrained to meet demands outside of them. I believe that this obvious difference from today is one of the causes of the greater frequency of cases of psychopathology that affect top athletes today. Last among all, the one witnessed by the words of Naomi Osaka, n.2 of women’s world tennis, who retired during Roland Garros.
Unfortunately it is not even entirely true what has been said about the athletes of 40/50 years ago, because if we think even only of the former East Germany we find that the athletes of this nation were not at all free to choose and the scientific use of State doping has created for them not only physical problems but also psychological diseases. The same is true for many athletes in the Western world who used illicit practices to achieve their sporting results.
The basic question to be studied is whether the sporting world that has become extremely competitive (and this is also true of the world of work) is the main (environmental) stressor that provokes in young an existential short circuit that encourages them to feel below their expectations and those required of them. The inability to adapt with effective strategies to these demands can determine an emotional imbalance that the rational mind alone can no longer manage.
Depression - It can be a transitory sadness or a debilitating mental illness, needing clinical treatment. Generally, those affected present with disturbed mood, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, loss of interest or pleasure, low energy, and poor concentration. These problems can become pervasive or recurrent, and lead to great difficulties in a person’s ability to attend to his or her everyday activities. Endemic in current society, depression is listed by WHO as the leading cause of disability and the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease (second among adolescents and adults younger than age 45 years) in terms of years of life affected.
