CHENNAI: When India went into lockdown last March, it also sent the country’s elite athletes into an area where they hadn’t really gone before mental health. A subject that is gaining traction among athletes of late, something unheard of in Indian Olympic sport say a decade ago. Athletes looked at this part of the training with both cynicism and scepticism.
A few of them, athletes who had already qualified for the Tokyo Games among them, started asking questions around mental health issues. It was only natural because their highly regimented world — training and competitions — had come crashing down. Two prominent sports psychologists at the time had noticed an increase in Indian athletes coming to them with complaints ranging from frustration to anxiety. Those were the first instances of some Indian athletes talking about the issue.
On Friday, Mugdha Bavare, a sports psychologist who counsels many of India’s Olympians, acknowledged that the pandemic had really impacted this area. “It (emphasis on mental health) wasn’t that it was not there earlier but it never came on to the surface,” Bavare said during an interaction organised by the Sports Authority of India (SAI). “To some extent I would say it was a good thing because for athletes, more so for elite athletes, mental health and mental well-being is of the utmost importance. It is ignored most of the times or they prefer to ignore it most of the times. Even if athletes think something is okay with them, they tend to blame themselves.”
The pandemic, Bavare opined, has taught athletes a few lessons while dealing with mental health. “Please express yourself if you are feeling emotionally unwell. In that aspect, it’s given all of our athletes a chance to speak up about mental health. So, yeah, I think the pandemic has really impacted this area. It wasn’t like this before 2019, I would say.”
Another psychologist, Sanjana Kiran, who was also on the panel on Friday, concurred. “What Covid did was it gave our athletes time to think through. The stigma around mental health is also lighter, it’s not as strong as it used to be.” It gave athletes time to self reflect because they, like the rest of the world, were living in their homes. Devoid of competitions and having a lot of time on their hands something many elite athletes are not used to they began to listen to themselves. That’s the theory put forth by Kiran.
“The pandemic kind of brought stillness. They had a lot of time for themselves because there was no training and no competitions. It gave them time to listen to themselves. All of them became more self aware which is hardly possible otherwise with their hectic life. They now had to accept that it’s okay to be afraid, to feel helpless. Mental health has been a concern since 2014-15 when Olympians started opening up about mental health. Covid gave them the space to think through.”