Mental Health Awareness Week: EIS Psycho-Social team supporting athletes and staff
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week from 10-16 May 2021, and the work of the English Institute of Sport (EIS) Psycho-Social team has been more important than ever for athletes and staff who have faced the challenges of lockdown.
The Psycho-Social team is made up of the Mental Health, Performance Lifestyle and Performance Psychology disciplines at the EIS, with the three departments coming together to ensure sports and athletes are supported as effectively as possible.
The team’s COVID-19 work started during the first national lockdown, where they developed the Psycho-Social Guidance for Returning to Training. This collaborative piece ensured purposeful and restorative integration for athletes as they returned to their sports.
Since then, the team has created a range of tips and guidance to help navigate winter 2020/21. This included an EIS Energy Plan to help manage self-care through this period, a series of TopTips to adapt to the uncertain and changing circumstances, and guidance for understanding burnout for both staff and athletes.
As well as this, the team co-ordinated the planning for a PhD based at Loughborough University to investigate Paralympic athlete experiences of mental health and wellbeing. This will take place over three years and will see researchers conducting an in-depth exploration into the subject. Find out more here.
The Mental Health, Performance Lifestyle and Performance Psychology teams have all conducted their own activity during this period too.
Delivery of mental health education has continued throughout the COVID-19 response, with our Mental Health team adapting by providing this virtually. Since this started back in 2018, the Mental Health team have delivered education to 33 sports. They have also delivered 50 hours of Mental Health Champions training during lockdown, which has resulted in over 100 people being trained to support mental health within their sport or organisation.
They also marked World Suicide Prevention Day and World Mental Health Day in 2020 by profiling race walker Tom Bosworth and his story to increase awareness.
Our Director of Athlete Health, Craig Ranson, has been invited to join a panel discussion at Westminster Insight’s Mental Health in Sport Digital Conference in September. This will revolve around tackling mental health in elite sport for athletes, coaches and staff, whilst understanding the unique experience through COVID-19 and the long-term impact it could have. You can find out more about the event here.
The Performance Lifestyle team has delivered numerous Athlete Futures events and maintained their newsletter to share athlete experiences of life after sport. Next Step READY has also become the first company to sign up as an EIS Affiliate to support the Performance Lifestyle team by preparing athletes for life after sport.
A great example of sharing practices developed for athletes with EIS members of staff was the Lockdown Debrief training led by the Performance Psychology team. This was delivered by members of the Performance Psychology to Line Managers across the EIS to have conversations with staff and make sense of their experiences during the first six to nine months of the pandemic. Over 150 debriefs took place, with the headlines and key themes being incorporated into future EIS learnings.
The work of the EIS Psycho-Social team shows the power and benefit of collaboration, with the three teams working together on their strategies for the Paris Cycle. This is to ensure there is clear integration of the teams’ objectives and the close working of the group continues during the next cycle.
The EIS is supporting and celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week on our internal and digital channels all week.