E-Sports
Esports team implements NCAA mental health training
Team launches training program in effort to ease burdens of competitive stress, academic pressure
By Vanessa Washington
“Psychological issues include depression, anxiety, apathy, uncooperative attitude, tension, sleep disturbances, mental distress, aggressive affect and behaviors, distress in social life, and emotional disturbances,” the 2021 study declared.
The activity also “was associated with the presence of depression, social phobia, obsession–compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychoticism attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and gaming addiction.”
As that last item suggests, the activity being looked at by the Industrial Psychiatry Journal study is excessive gaming.
You see – and as UND’s Frank Swiontek and Ryan Kraus fully understand – there’s a lot more to video gaming than just relaxing with buddies and having fun.
Swiontek is the innovation officer at UND, and Kraus is the head coach of UND’s esports team. Make no mistake, esports athletes can experience significant stress; and during the team’s post-season contests last fall, Kraus and Swiontek say, that stress was starting to take its toll.
“At the time, playoffs were occurring, finals were kicking up, and we were starting to see the wear and tear that some of this competitive stress was having on these players,” Swiontek said. He and Kraus both noticed this, and in response, the two began researching what practices they could implement to help their athletes before the start of the spring season.
The NCAA’s mental-health toolbox
As they discovered, not much has been written about mental health guidelines for esports, one of the newest competitive activities for college athletes. But the NCAA itself, Kraus and Swiontek learned, has a new and useful mental health mandate for all NCAA athletes.
And that’s why this spring, UND’s esports team implemented mental health training, in an effort to ease the burdens of competitive stress and academic pressure. (Editor’s note: Posters such as the ones shown with this story, which hang in UND’s esports spaces, are a part of that effort.)
Here’s how the American Council on Education’s Higher Education Today reported the NCAA’s action last July:
“The NCAA, in consultation with its Mental Health Advisory Group, has released a new edition of Mental Health Best Practices, which provides guidance to support student-athletes’ mental well-being,” Higher Ed Today reported.
“NCAA member institutions are required to offer resources and services consistent with the best practices, which go into effect Aug. 1, 2024.”
All college athletes experience stress and anxiety, of course. But for esports athletes, the sport adds a few key stressors all its own: For one thing, the teams compete in both the fall and spring, which means players don’t have much of an “off season” in which to decompress.
For another, in esports competitions, players are subject to sudden death, meaning they can be “killed” and removed from the game in an instant. So, all esports athletes know that each game is an utterly unpredictable situation, one where they might be left standing almost alone.
As an esports player once put it, “We game to escape stress, only to be stressed out over the game.”
In such an environment, the stress can be heightened. This past semester was no different, except there was a new effort taken by UND
Stress 101: How to cope in healthy ways
The NCAA’s Mental Health Best Practices guide “emphasizes the importance of making high-quality mental health care available to student-athletes,” Higher Education Today noted in its story.
“It also recognizes that the dual roles of student and athlete can entail both unique mental health risk and protective factors. For example, injuries increase student-athletes’ risk of mental health symptoms, while relationships with teammates can fortify mental health.”
Armed with this knowledge, Kraus and Swiontek got in touch with Michael Herbert, a research data analyst in University Analytics and Planning, and Michael Soward, a doctoral intern in Clinical Psychology at UND’s Counseling Center.
From there, the esports leaders learned that they would first need to establish a few things. For example, they needed a plan for how they were going to present this new idea to their athletes, plus a description of just what that idea would involve.
They decided to begin with a quick hands-on course at the beginning of the semester to introduce the athletes to the free resources that are available to them. Next came the CCAPS, or Counseling Center Application of Psychological Symptoms. This is a 10-minute mental health screening in which the athletes answer questions.
The screening can identify individuals who may be struggling with increased anxiety, depression, substance use and even suicidality.
“We’re able to identify those individuals who could benefit from additional support,” said Soward. “We report back to the coaches and let them know, and it then falls onto the coaches to reach out to those students.”
CCAPS offers other ways to identify what an athlete is going through, and one of these was introduced to the team captains at the start. It teaches how to start the conversation, how to engage team members about mental health and where teammates might be struggling, and how to identify those struggles in their teammates.
While Kraus is the head coach, there has been a big increase in athletes participating in esports; there are now close to 90 at UND. That means the team captains, given their closeness to the players, tend to be the most appropriate leaders to initiate these challenging conversations.
The program’s goal “is to nurture and keep all these athletes safe, especially in the mental health aspect,” Soward said.
From trial run to standard feature
While the spring conversations were a trial run for the program, team leaders were surprised by how many players took it seriously; in fact, they say, it was an overwhelming success. They were also surprised by how many athletes started watching out for one another after taking part in the training, the CCAPS element in particular.
“I’ve seen them become a lot more accepting,” said Kraus. “I’ve actually heard some students talk about it, especially when we were doing those tests.”
When asked what changes he hoped would result from this project, Swiontek said change wasn’t the goal. Instead, better awareness among the coaches and athletes was.
And if the team’s initial response to the project is any indication, that awareness seems likely to grow, through the fall esports season and beyond.
About the author:
