Help-Seeking in Sport: What 104 Studies Reveal About Athlete Mental Health

We’re excited to share that our latest research, led by Kirsty Brown, has just been published in BMJ Open! The paper, titled “Athletes’ access to, attitudes towards and experiences of help-seeking for mental health: a scoping review,” explores how athletes engage with mental health support, and where gaps in the research still lie. 

Why This Matters 

Athletes experience mental health challenges at rates similar to the general population, but they often face unique barriers to seeking help. These include sport-specific pressures, stigma, and concerns about how disclosure might affect selection or performance. 

Our review synthesised findings from 104 studies across 20 years, mapping out how athletes access support, what they think about seeking help, and what their experiences have been, particularly with formal (e.g., psychologists, GPs) and semiformal (e.g., coaches, academic advisors) sources of support. 

Key Findings 

• Attitudes toward help-seeking were the most studied (79% of papers), while access was the least (32%). 

• Most research focused on formal sources of support; only 2% of studies looked at semiformal sources in isolation. 

• Student-athletes in the USA were the most commonly studied group. 

• There’s a lack of research from non-Western countries, and many studies didn’t report participants’ ethnicity. 

• Less than half of the studies used validated help-seeking measures, limiting comparability across findings. 

  
  

Why This Review Is Different 

This is the first scoping review to apply Rickwood and colleagues’ help-seeking frameworks to athlete mental health. By using these frameworks, we were able to categorise findings more clearly and identify where future research is most needed, such as: 

• Understanding access to support services 

• Exploring semi-formal support (like coaches and mentors) 

• Conducting more qualitative and mixed-methods research 

• Including diverse populations beyond Western, student-athlete samples 

  
  

What’s Next? 

We hope this review will guide future research and inform interventions embedded within sports organisations. There’s a clear need to improve access to mental health support and to leverage the trusted relationships athletes already have, especially with coaches and support staff. 

Read the Full Article 

The paper is open access and available here: 👉 Athletes’ access to, attitudes towards and experiences of help-seeking for mental health: a scoping review | BMJ Open

Press release: Athlete mental health support from coaches “under explored” in research amidst deselection concerns | EurekAlert!

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Written by Kirsty Brown