MAC Commissioner Discusses Student-Athlete Mental Health

Paul Steinbach Headshot
[Photo courtesy of the Mid-American Conference]
[Photo courtesy of the Mid-American Conference]

Want to know what's on the minds of collegiate student-athletes? Ask them. That's just what Mid-American Conference commissioner Jon Steinbrecher did following the 2013-14 academic year, when he sought direction from MAC athletes regarding issues his office could better address. Their response steered the league to the national forefront of mental health awareness and promotion in the form of its recurring Mental Health Summit and Mental Health Awareness Week. This year, the MAC's third summit gathered dozens of student-athletes, coaches, administrators, faculty and medical experts to discuss the prevention of self-harm and suicide. AB senior editor Paul Steinbach asked Steinbrecher to open up about the conference's ongoing efforts.

How did athletes characterize mental health issues to you?
Things such as stress, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, suicides on campus, just a host of things, and it's reflective. And it was kind of the early warning flare, quite frankly, for something we're talking about in the context of intercollegiate athletics, yet mental health is an incredible issue across the entire collegiate populations. It's just something that's kind of exploded, and if you talk to schools, they would point to mental health as becoming a leading issue as to why kids don't continue in school — why they drop out. It's truly a public health issue.

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