Abstract
Mental health issues represent a significant health problem among competitive athletes. Though seeking help from professional sources (e.g., counselors) is important for mental wellbeing, athletes have reported several barriers to help-seeking. In particular, athletes are situated in hypercompetitive contexts and often report that they believe help-seeking is socially unacceptable and/or uncommon (i.e., negative social norm perceptions). The present study investigated whether social norms from several important normative referents including coaches, teammates, parents, and friends were associated with athletes’ intentions to seek help for mental health concerns. Survey data from 290 college athletes in the US and Canada were analyzed. After accounting for attitudes, stigma, and past help-seeking experience, perceptions that their parents would seek help for mental health concerns were positively associated with athletes’ own intentions to seek help, b = .14, p = .006. Moderation analyses showed that the relationship between athletes’ perceptions of their teammates’ help-seeking and their own help-seeking intentions was stronger under conditions of lower perceptions of approval from teammates, interaction b = -.08, p = .046. This interaction suggests that athletes’ perceptions of their teammates’ help-seeking for mental health concerns may relate to their own intentions to seek help only if it is unclear whether their teammates explicitly approve help-seeking. Overall, the findings highlight that although college athletes are legally of the age of majority, parents may still have an important influence on athletes’ help-seeking, and that teammates’ approval may also be an important factor for help-seeking.
