Mental health of elite-level coaches

COACHES who operate in elite and professional sports encounter a range of stressors that have the potential to influence or compromise mental health.

These demands emanate from the diverse set of roles and responsibilities elite-level coaches are required to perform and fulfil. In addition to their technical, tactical and strategic expertise, coaches also serve as educators, motivators, counsellors and even friends.

On top of performance pressures, elite-level coaches also encounter multiple organisational challenges, including long working hours, job insecurity, media scrutiny and pressures to satisfy Board/management expectations.

Much like the elite athletes they coach, this combination of performance, organisational and personal-related stressors may contribute towards a coach’s experience of mental health.

With exposure to these multiple stressors, it is critical to ensure that coaches possess appropriate coping or stress management strategies, in conjunction with robust social networks and organisational supports that look to protect and preserve the mental health of elite-level coaches.

Over the past decade, research into the mental health of elite sportspeople has gathered considerable momentum. To date, research has primarily examined the mental health outcomes of elite athletes, with comparatively less research focusing on understanding these psychological experiences among coaches.

Managing multiple athletes

Coaches operate in the same elite-level environments as athletes, but arguably possess a greater set of performance and organisational responsibilities, given they are often expected to manage and oversee the performances of multiple athletes, while simultaneously acting as the public face and cultural identity of a sporting organisation.

Elite-level coaches generally operate within high-pressure environments, where the margin between success and failure may be scrutinised by a range of individuals that operate within the public domain like fans, the media and former players, and can negatively impact one’s employment status if a coach is perceived to have regularly underperformed.

The mental health experiences and literacy of elite-level coaches should, therefore, not be overlooked or underestimated. Moreover, given that these individuals hold prominent leadership roles, coaches play a role in cultivating an organisational or team environment that facilitates optimal well-being.

Coaches who are contemplating or recently experiencing retirement report even higher rates of mental health symptomatology, which is consistent with a pattern observed in retired or former elite athletes.

Risk factors

Known risk factors for mental ill health among coaches include lack of life balance, burnout, performance-based stresses like lack of athlete commitment, poor performance and poor performance preparation, organisational stresses like poor organisational communication, unclear roles, conflict and personal challenges like missing children’s education, long periods away from home.

Of note, organisational but not performance stressors have been found to be predictive of increased depression/anxiety symptoms. In the limited available evidence, coaches have identified job security, professional and personal growth opportunities, high autonomy support and life balance as protective mental health factors.