YOUR ATHLETE’S MENTAL HEALTH: PART TWO

Let me be blunt….we live in very troubling times. And our kids are perhaps even more vulnerable as to what’s going on in our world than we are. And they often don’t know who to turn to for help.

According to a recent article in AARP magazine – and I quote – “Never in modern American history have rates of teen depression, loneliness, and even suicide ever been so high.”

As I went through on last week’s radio show — when I went down the recent list of top college athletes who seemingly were on top of the world — only to have been hiding deep despair and ended up killing themselves, the question remains:

How could this be?

No one has a definitive answer. But let me share some recent research with you, and it stems from kids and their cellphones.

I don’t have to tell you that kids are attached to their cellphone and to social media. Our kids know how to work their phones and social media a lot better than we do. Just accept that. But also understand that such knowledge can bring danger.

Studies show that if you compare teenage mood disorders from 2009 - -that’s just before cellphone became ubiquitous with kids – with what it was like in 2019 – just ten years later, the numbers are sobering. Teenage anxiety and depression shot up between 50-150 percent.

What drove this and continues to drive this? Again, most experts say it is connected to social media on the kid’s phones. In short, social media allows kids to reach out to others. Put it this way: Bullies used to be physically limited to the playground or schoolyard. But now bullies have the ability to reach out and harass teenagers pretty much 24/7.

That, my friend, is a real problem.

I urge you to listen to this powerful conversation from sports parents and coaches who called in to discuss what we need to be aware of, in order to let our athletes know we are truly there for them. Listen here:The Sports Edge with Rick Wolff