Athlete Mental Health
This project was created to promote the importance of athlete mental health and to emphasize the power of journaling in that process through a sticker.
Outcome
The final sticker is meant to highlight the importance of the mind in an athletes career. Its call to action is to journal and to write out what is in your mind so that you can work through it in different ways. I hope that this will spread awareness for the importance of athlete mental health. In the future I hope that the journal that I design will help do just that and be accessible to athletes everywhere.
Problem
A huge part of being an athlete and competing at the highest level is mental. According to the journal article, An Examination of Depression, Anxiety, and Self-Esteem in Collegiate Student-Athletes, Student-athletes (22.3%) were at risk for depression, anxiety (12.5%), and low self-esteem (8%). This is a huge problem and more attention needs to be paid to it. Taking care of your mental health is for YOU! It is all about mental fitness. However, we are not always taught how to take care of our mental health as athletes. Not every athletic department has the resources to provide their student-athletes with behavioral health or therapy sessions. Althetes need to know that they are not alone and that they can conquer any mental blocks that they are experiencing so that they can train and compete at the highest level. I want to explore the mental health of athletes (collegiate and professional) so that we can support athletes of all ages and in the plethora of sports.
For this project I sought to combine the mental side of being an athlete into a single graphic. I wanted to create a fun visual that would start the conversation and spread awareness to the importance of athlete mental health.
Approach
I began with secondary research, my lived experiences, and brainstorming in the discovery phase. Next, I summarized my idea and then went into the creation phase. I designed several different sticker ideas and visualized them through sketches and digital renderings. I went through a process of iteration using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fresco, and one note to create my final sticker.
I think that athletes value that they are more than just the people you see competing in a uniform. There is so much that makes each athlete unique. Every athlete has a different story and has gone through different experiences. The idea behind this sticker came from my dream of creating an athlete mental health journal. I think that athletes will value a product made by each other for each other. I think that athletes will enjoy helping others who will come after they or their current peers overcome mental health challenges or manage their mental health.
