Abstract 5: The Devil is in the Details: Lessons Learned from a Mental Health Intervention Pilot Study with USPORTS Student-athletes

This presentation describes the development, delivery, and assessment of a pilot project of a student-athlete specific mental health intervention. Mental health of student-athletes in Canada is a significant concern. The current project was part of a long-term partnership with the Canadian Mental Health Association and university athletics and student support services in a mid-sized Canadian university. The intervention recognized mental health needs of USPORTS athletes (Giovanetti et al., 2016) and limitations of mental interventions in sport (Breslin et al., 2022). CMHA’s Talk Today program was implemented with two randomly assigned varsity teams while two other teams acted as a wait-listed control group. Student-athletes in both conditions completed an online survey package at four time points over six months. Outcomes included mental health literacy, stigma, help seeking, and psychological distress. While there was no significant effect of the Talk Today program on any outcomes, summary assessment responses from participants and anecdotal feedback from student services suggested that the program was influential and well-received. In addition to the statistical analyses, the lessons learned from such an intensive, multiple partner pilot project were quite valuable. For example, characteristics of the context (institutional priority of mental health awareness), sample (relatively high personal history of mental health issues in control group), and design (response fatigue, participant contamination) all may have impacted results and implications. We believe that the knowledge learned throughout this process that can be used to inform future projects.