Towson, Md. – May is Mental Health Awareness month, an occasion to emphasize the importance of what has become a prevalent issue across the country. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five adults in the United States experience mental illness each year.
 
According to an NCAA student-athlete well-being study released last December, the number of student-athletes reporting mental health concerns is 1.5 to two times higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic with 40 percent of college athletes admitting to having depression.
 
Towson University offers the most comprehensive sports program in the metropolitan Baltimore area, fielding 19 NCAA Division I varsity teams that compete primarily in the Colonial Athletic Association, one of the nation's top mid-major conferences. Student-athletes represent a prominent group on campus and experience unique stressors that increase vulnerability to mental illness.

"There is a changing landscape within the demands of college athletics," said Nathan Wilder, Towson's senior associate athletic director for sports medicine and performance. "We are seeing a change in culture and who the student-athlete is coming into the college environment. I attribute it to the helicopter parenting. There are a lot of resources out there that says today's kids do not have the same resiliency. That is not to say that it is better or worse – it is just different. We need to hit multiple levels of care with the primary focus to be on mental wellness and not only sports psychology."

In collaboration with the Towson University Counseling Center, the Towson Athletics department created a three-person team to help Towson's 500 student-athletes lead healthier lives and perform better on the field by combining sports counseling and mental health skills.

Blake Costalupes just finished his first semester as the Towson Athletics behavioral health coordinator. Hired in January, Costalupes, who is licensed in psychotherapy, is an extension of the counseling center and provides health consultations and solution-focused support. He created Let's Talk, a one-on-one therapy session, with counseling services including, but not limited to, depression, anxiety and relationships concerns.

"Mental health has always been around, but there is a change in how we talk about mental health, which has increased the prevalence of these jobs," Costalupes said. "The pressure starts at a really young age with athletes looking to get a scholarship. COVID dropped a magnifying glass on all symptoms of nervousness, sadness and increased the prevalence of anxiety and depression student-athletes have. We are still catching up to the affects that had."

Prior to Towson, Costalupes provided psychological consultation for the West Virginia women's volleyball and men's golf teams in individual and group formats and was a mental performance consultant for the Fresno State women's water polo and women's volleyball squads, where he provided mental skill training and development to student-athletes and coaches.

"Blake's credentials cover us from the well thriving athlete who has some performance anxiety at the foul line and has some sports psychology needs who wants to get better in how they perform all the way until someone who is in crisis to where there is a true mental health issue that needs to be dealt with in more of a clinical nature," added Wilder. "He has put himself into a position to be integrated very quickly. He has done a lot of listening and learning with some of the current programs we have going – from prevention and resilience to mental health care at the counseling center. He has built relationships with coaches, student-athletes, medical staff and athletic trainers. As we roll on, he is going to continue to build upon his skill set to provide programming on multiple levels for our student-athletes. His primary focus has been counseling with one-on-one visits. We will expand that into more group sessions and more cohort type programming."

"Blake coming in has created a positive shift," said Towson University tennis player Lea Kosanovic. "Whether it is struggling with your sport or off the court, he is a really good resource."
 
Former Towson University gymnast Amanda Clements, a Certified Professional Coach (CPC), was hired as a mental health coach. As the owner of Beyond the Game, she uses mental performance concepts to help athletes manage performance anxiety, overcome mistakes in real time, manage stress and increase their emotional intelligence.

"A lot of the mental performance side really comes down to first and foremost starting to pay attention to your own thoughts and emotions during performance and then starting to see correlation between when I have certain thoughts when I perform and starting to see a clear connection," Clements said. "Most athletes inherently know that when they are over thinking they do not do well, but it is about really looking at it and seeing the connection. Once we identify what thoughts are unhelpful, and we cannot control when they show up, what we can put in place to override it."

"I am focusing on being stronger mentally on the court and getting off to better starts," added Kosanovic. "Amanda really focused on breathing exercises and staying calm if emotions were getting the best of me. Instead of focusing on how poorly I am playing, it is how can I rewire my brain back to focus on the things I can control. If my backhand is not good that day, I need to adjust and do something that will help my game. Amanda gave me breathing exercises that I worked on. When I talked to her, I felt she understood what I was going through."

At the team level, Clements is brought in when issues arise surrounding culture, connection or communication. It is through the same mental performance concepts that she collaborates with teams to create an environment in which the athletes feel in control of their performance, and the coaches feel clear on how to support the mental and emotional growth of their players.

"I always have been a big proponent of this space because I think for our sport specifically, a sport where you have so much time to think, and the golf ball is sitting there not moving," Towson men's golf coach Mike Larkin said. "The mental side of golf is so important – just from a sports performance perspective. I have always been interested in this for our program. It then transitions into the total mental health of the student-athlete and those two things go hand-in-hand. The performance and the mental health of the student-athletes. I love what is being offered here. It seems like every year we have continued to expand the offerings to the student-athletes."

Prior to the pandemic, Dr. Faizan Imtiaz, an assistant professor of organizational psychology at the university, began working with the athletics department as a sport psychologist – focusing on resilience and performance during high pressure environments. Imtiaz, who has experience with Canadian Olympic teams, runs a resilience program that every new student-athlete - freshmen or transfer - must go through before his/her first semester.

"This year has been our best resilience program." Wilder said. "Faizan tries to cut off the need for mental health care by giving student-athletes the skill sets to be resilient in their daily lives. With the millennial culture not having great coping skills, it is about teaching them how they can control the controllables and be more resilient in their daily schedules. Helping them with advocating for themselves and having conversations with coaches has given us a foundation. That fits into the whole model of our holistic health care model within sports performance. We are trying to do everything we can to prevent illness and injury and find ways to enhance performance to ultimately be more competitive."

"Towson University is ahead of the curve." Costalupes said. "There are schools of similar size that are not doing the things were are doing. Our athletics department is doing a really good job of getting ahead of the game to enhance the student-athlete experience in ways other schools are not thinking about. That is one of the reasons that drew me to this position. I had some other opportunities at bigger institutions but did not want to be a number and not make an impact. The opportunity to make an impact here."