This text is part of the special Acfas Congress booklet
A significant proportion of young athletes have already been the victim of violence or experienced symptoms of a mental health disorder during their sporting career. But there are solutions to prevent these problems and to better support the children and adolescents who face them. These discoveries will be the subject of a symposium on May 11 and 12.
The event will be titled Preserving the psychological and physical integrity of athletes in a sports context: uniting the forces of the community and research. “There are ramifications that violence can have mental health impacts. And conversely, some mental health problems have violence as a risk factor”, sums up Sylvie Parent, holder of the research chair on safety and integrity in sports and co-responsible for the symposium.
Without talking about cause and effect, Sylvie Parent cites recent data which nevertheless establishes links between violence and its consequences on self-esteem and mental health. “For example, for eating disorders, some athletes experience violence from certain people around them,” illustrates the one who is also a professor in the Department of Physical Education at Laval University.
The symposium will also address the question of the psychological state of young athletes during the pandemic, the modus operandi abusers, as well as the violence and exclusion experienced by transgender athletes.
Several types of violence
Young people can suffer psychological, physical, sexual abuse, or even be victims of neglect, lists Mme parent. “When we talk about neglect, it’s something that isn’t done, but should have been,” she explains.
Humiliation, shouting following a bad result, psychological violence can sometimes be advocated by some in order to motivate athletes. “We aim to increase performance, to stimulate competitiveness. The intention is not necessarily to harm the athlete. Often, psychological violence will be used in this way,” observes the researcher.
According to’Study on the experience of Quebec athletes by Sylvie Parent and Marie-Pier Vaillancourt Morel published in 2020, more than one in four young people (28.2%) said they had suffered sexual violence. And 79.2% of the 1,055 teenagers aged 14 to 17 questioned had been victims of some form of psychological violence. Physical abuse affected 39.9% of respondents, and 35.7% said they had experienced neglect.
If this convenience sample does not necessarily represent the precise portrait of the situation in Quebec, “we still find substantially the same figures internationally,” observes Ms.me parent.
Solutions tested in the field
If there is still “a lot of work to do”, according to Mme Parent, measures to better support young people are already emerging. “The Université de Sherbrooke has put in place a mental health intervention plan for its athletes. The same thing is happening with violence,” she says.
She also cites the Cohaesia initiative of the Sport’Aide organization, which wants to equip coaches to act positively on their group. “They work precisely to prevent bullying within sports teams,” she summarizes.
As part of the symposium at the Acfas Congress, Alexanne Prince-Pelletier, candidate for a master’s degree in sexology at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM), will present the review of the writings of her thesis. His conference will focus in particular on the good and bad moves of managers in the implementation of measures to prevent sexual violence.
She points out that the sports community is no more affected by these abuses than the others. “It’s similar in all institutions that work with young people,” such as schools, recreation centers and day camps, she says. For her, the first step in combating this scourge is to train and educate managers.
The researcher also recalls the implementation in February 2021 of a policy to protect the integrity of the person. And this, in all the sports federations in Quebec.
For his part, M.me Parent believes that it is still too early to see the impact of the measure on the number of cases of violence or mental health problems among young athletes. “Organizations are currently collecting data. They are going to present them as part of the symposium,” she explains. She nevertheless wishes to evaluate it eventually, in order to verify whether such a system is adequate and to see ways of improving it.