{"id":718,"date":"2020-08-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/providing-psycho-social-support-for-athletes-returning-to-action\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:14","slug":"providing-psycho-social-support-for-athletes-returning-to-action","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/providing-psycho-social-support-for-athletes-returning-to-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Providing Psycho-Social Support For Athletes Returning to Action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n Aug 06, 2020 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

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Kate Hays and Sam Cumming of the English Institute of Sport describe the collaborative approach that saw mental health and wellbeing come into focus during the start of the pandemic.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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\u201cPeople approached it really collaboratively and immediately asked how we could all work together around this common problem,\u201d says Dr Kate Hays<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

Hays, the Head of Psychology at the English Institute of Sport [EIS], is discussing her organisation\u2019s response to sport\u2019s worldwide shutdown in March, which ultimately led to the 12-month postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Games.<\/p>\n

She is joined by her colleague Sam Cumming, who has served as the EIS Mental Health Manager since March 2019. The duo have logged on to meet the Leaders Performance Institute on Microsoft Teams, which has been the preferred medium of communication at both organisations since face to face meetings were abruptly taken off the table.<\/p>\n

Hays\u2019 experience of working in Olympic and professional sport extends back to 2003. Previously she spent three seasons in performance support at Harlequins, beginning in 2011, and took a role at British Diving that saw her support the British team at the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Games. She took her current psychology-focused EIS role in 2015 and closed out her work with British Diving at the 2016 Rio Games.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe manner in which the EIS\u2019 Psychology, Mental Health and Performance Lifestyle Teams came together was pretty immediate,\u201d says Cumming, who previously spent six years with GB Rowing. \u201cAt a leadership level we were catching up every day as we recognised that this was an area where we could provide significant benefits across all sports by working closely together.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the UK entered lockdown in late March, Hays says that the focus shifted from performance to what she describes as the \u2018psycho-social\u2019 considerations for the phased return to action across the 40 Olympic and Paralympic sports which the EIS works alongside.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been asking how people have been managing the psycho-social elements around their current context and assessing their wellbeing and support needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are psycho-social considerations?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere was potential for this to be such a grey area,\u201d says Hays of the concept. \u201cThere are some things that are definitely the realm of the Psychology team, the Mental Health team, and the Performance Lifestyle team, then there\u2019s this grey area in between where the people in those teams have similar and transferable skillsets; and if we hadn\u2019t collaborated we ran a real risk of several people trying to do the same job.\u201d<\/p>\n

The EIS Performance Lifestyle Team primarily works with athletes through the transitions they face, whether that be into, through or out of high performance sport. \u201cTheir work also includes helping athletes to establish more rounded identities so that they\u2019re the person before the athlete,\u201d says Hays in explanation. \u201cIt can be any number of things that contribute to greater wellbeing and positive mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n

With those bases covered, the Psychology Team is more focused on athletes\u2019 thoughts, feelings and emotions, and how they translate to performance. \u201cHow you think and feel influences your behaviour and vice versa. That could be anything, from the obvious in this current context: anxieties; it could be coping mechanisms, it could be developing resilience, it could be confidence. It could be all of those things you\u2019d expect in addition to growth areas and personal development.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we talk about a return to training, the psychological piece is predominantly how the individual is managing that and the resources that they have. The social piece is then how that is viewed within their environment and their context. In the return to training, there are so many considerations. For example, you may have an athlete or a staff member who in returning to the training environment, actually increases risk for their household.\u201d<\/p>\n

Purposeful and restorative reintegration<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

The aim was for purposeful and restorative integration for athletes. \u201cThe restorative phase comes from a crisis response model we used in planning our offer of support for this significant period of adjustment,\u201d explains Cumming. The EIS used a crisis response framework currently used by the UK\u2019s National Health Service to consider the psychological responses to the pandemic. \u201cAfter the impact phase,\u201d he continues, \u201cis the heroic phase where everybody is able to muck in, then the honeymoon phase where people are able to focus on the positives. Then there\u2019s the disillusionment phase when frustration or low motivation creeps in; you then come back to that reintegration phase which we recognised as the return to training \u00a0process. \u00a0At this stage support needs to be restorative.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about bringing people back together with a purpose, being completely clear about why we\u2019re coming back, how is it going to happen and what the expectations are. When bringing people back together they need to understand why that\u2019s happening; people are going to be at different stages of readiness to return and it\u2019s great that an approach has been taken that\u2019s less prescriptive and more of an opt-in process.\u201d<\/p>\n

The model described above defines three primary needs for athletes when it comes to reintegration: accessing, affirming and reconnecting. \u2018Accessing\u2019 comes with the opt-in process, which allows athletes to consider their changing environmental or personal circumstances so that they can make informed decisions on their possible return. Should they return, there will then be an opportunity to establish mutual expectations from the point of view of the athlete and the sports themselves.<\/p>\n

However, is there not a risk of putting undue pressure on athletes to return? \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve been asked that question!\u201d replies Hays with a smile. \u201cI think it\u2019s a glaringly difficult thing that needs to be accounted for. Can you totally mitigate against that? I don\u2019t think you can. The best chance you have is really taking an individualised approach to this and giving people the opportunity to tell their story and process their experiences because there are a multitude of reasons why people might feel a multitude of things, from fear to guilt to enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got circumstances where if an athlete opts out then their coach doesn\u2019t have anybody to coach, it\u2019s such a complex area but the thing that you can control is being consistent around the messaging, emphasising that this is a non-judgemental process, you are in control of your own destiny, you are in control of how this looks for you, we want to hear your stories, we want to understand your experiences. You can control that, you can control the amount of support that you provide not only to the athletes and staff that are on the receiving end of that process, but also those that are delivering it and taking people through that process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen you can provide levels of support for the initial conversation, after the initial conversation, and proactively as they transition back into that environment or not, to help them work through and process their experiences, thoughts and feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helping athletes with their self-care<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

The second need, \u2018affirming\u2019, largely concerns self-care. Both Cumming and Hays noted that athletes were relatively well-prepared for the lockdown, which some viewed as akin to a training camp. \u201cHaving strategies developed from times when they\u2019re remote from family or support network may provide a unique strength for some athletes\u201d observes Cumming. \u201cHaving been a bit more independent in how they look after themselves it\u2019s fair to say that many already had familiar coping skills coming into lockdown. Self-care is something that the EIS Mental Health team have pushed through our mental health awareness programme and these strategies can certainly be applied to the lockdown situation\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, an EIS document on Psychosocial Guidance for Returning to Training, encourages practitioners to help athletes and others to \u2018accept alternative experiences to your own and be willing to hear a perspective that may not align to yours\u2019. It also highlights that \u2018individual responses and readiness to return will be fluid, changeable and nonlinear.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOn reflection, I think really focusing on self-care is something that coaches and support staff can find challenging\u201d says Cumming. \u201cBut maybe through this situation there\u2019s been some forced focus on it and that might be a positive thing for some people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Processing your experiences<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

The third need around reintegration is \u2018reconnecting\u2019, which is largely concerned with feedback loops and ongoing conversations around the athlete\u2019s decision to opt-in.<\/p>\n

The EIS encourages both group and individual debriefing and has devised a structure that takes its inspiration from research into hostage debriefing. \u201cThe purpose of it in essence is to help people to deal with the experience and to process that,\u201d explains Hays. \u201cThere\u2019s different areas of it and each one has got a different goal; but the purpose is to help people explore their experiences, to get to the facts of what they\u2019ve experienced and focus on some of the things that have been critical for them. That\u2019s simply a way of just sharing personal experiences; so not necessarily doing anything with it but just giving people the opportunity to talk and tell their story. That is very individualised and there would be a mixture of things for each person.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter moving through the facts, it\u2019s a focus on what are the thoughts that you have around this? What sense have you made of this situation? What reflections have you had? While some of this will be positively framed, there\u2019s likely to be some negative reactions in there also. We\u2019re just giving people an opportunity to walk through those.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may well be a whole range of things from hopelessness to guilt, to sadness, anxiety, irritability, as well as some positive emotions around new contexts moving through growth areas, personal reflections etc. Then there\u2019s a piece around normalising and acknowledging impact of the experience, any reactions that that individual\u2019s had; discussing their reactions to lockdown, the abnormality of the experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen how we can look forward, giving the opportunity to tell stories, to process some of that information, to reflect on it and take the good, the bad and the ugly, and then incorporate that into future planning. So what are the coping mechanisms that allow that person to move through? What\u2019s their self-care look like? How can we take some of the learnings and reflections and utilise them in a positive way moving forward? Those are the kind of things we\u2019re trying to get to in debriefing conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Psychological first aid<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

The EIS Healthy Adjustment and Transition document also refers to \u2018psychological first aid\u2019 and the Leaders Performance Institute is intrigued by the notion. \u201cWe built some of our training \u00a0on that concept to support for the Psychology and Performance Lifestyle teams specifically,\u201d explains Cumming.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things we set up early was specific training to help people feel more comfortable having supportive conversations with a focus on mental health. The EIS Mental Health Expert Panel (a small group of highly experienced Sports Clinical Psychologists and Psychiatrists) provides our system with guidance specifically related to mental health. \u00a0We engaged the Panel to develop and deliver a session on supporting healthy adjustments and the main area of focus in that training session was psychological first aid.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important to note that psychological first aid is different from mental health first aid. Psychological first aid is really about making sure people\u2019s basic needs are being met from a psychological perspective, focusing on what they need specifically in their environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The future<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

Both Hays and Cumming agree that the lockdown reinforced the value of collaborative work, connection and the combined focus on performance, mental health, psychology and wellbeing. The hope is now that the EIS and its sports can take these lessons forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be too easy whenever there\u2019s any semblance of normality for new growth behaviours to disappear,\u201d says Hays. \u201cWe know that the most recently adopted behaviours will be the first ones to go so it would be really exploring what are some of the barriers in place to stop some of this really good stuff and how we pre-empt that to ensure that it doesn\u2019t happen. Because as much as this has been an extremely difficult time for everybody in some respects, there has been an enormous amount of positivity to come from it also.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Looking for more performance insight?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Performance<\/em> 21<\/em> is available for download now and leads with a selection of insights lifted from our At Home With Leaders podcast series, which has featured the likes of England Rugby\u2019s Eddie Jones<\/strong>, the Toronto Blue Jays\u2019 Mark Shapiro<\/strong>, and Chelsea\u2019s Emma Hayes<\/strong> speaking directly from their home offices.<\/p>\n