When Does an Elite Athlete Need Mental Health Treatment?
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Many athletes get the "jitters" — a feeling of anxiety — just prior to competing. For elite athletes, whether they're participating in an individual event or as part of a team, whether on a track, court, rink, or field, this feeling can affect performance. It is a well-known, and not unexpected, phenomenon that comes with the territory. Nevertheless, specialists should keep a lookout for signs of more severe mental disorders — ones that may show up in other areas of the person's life. These disorders may call for targeted psychotherapeutic treatment or the prescription of psychotropic drugs
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@kedar-nath It's just not that straightforward. It's not that simple. When someone is in the throes of anxiety or depression, there are more factors at play than just chemical imbalances. And we should never rule out family history or genetics. A psychiatric condition that has a significant genetic component — for example, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, an addictive disorder — this always has to be taken into account when we see athletes with symptoms that make us suspect that there's something more going on. These are red flags that have to be looked into and evaluated — not so that we can slap on a label or diagnosis but so that we can be more attentive to the symptoms' evolution