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The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten and Pac-12 launched an initiative Monday to raise awareness of the importance of mental health as part of their conference alliance announced earlier this year.
The teammates for Mental Health will be revealed this week during basketball games involving the three conferences.
There will be a public service announcement that will be broadcasted throughout the games. The PSA will air on several networks, including the Big Ten network and the Pac-12 Network.
The initiative will include in-arena signs and pins for coaches.
The conferences formed an alliance to work together on scheduling, as well as off-field issues like the future of NCAA governance and athlete welfare.
When the alliance was formed, people paid a lot of attention to the schedule pieces. The major issues from an NCAA standpoint and the future college athletics are also part of the equation, according to the commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The student athlete experience is the core of it.
Over the last four months, 10 working groups of athletic directors and other administrators and school officials have been meeting. Four groups are focused on scheduling games and events between conferences in football, men's and women's basketball and Olympic sports. Compliance, NCAA issues, social responsibility, and how best to support mental and physical well-being of athletes are some of the things the other six are looking at.
The three conferences collaborated on the Teammates for Mental Health campaign. Each conference was working on its own issues with athletes.
The alliance is all about sharing best practices across the 41 institutions and the three conferences and we have experts for each of the conferences, meeting on a regular basis.
The mental health of athletes has become a topic of discussion, with Olympic champion Simone Biles and tennis Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka among those speaking out or taking steps to protect themselves.
Athletes and coaches are encouraged to be on the lookout for signs that someone is struggling with their mental health.
Kevin Warren, the Big Ten commissioner who played college basketball, said that the pressure on athletes is greater than ever and the attention they receive through social media can compound the stress. He said the goal is to have everyone involved in athletics treat mental-health ailments the same way they would physical injuries.
Warren's son is a football player. Mental health is a topic of conversation with his son, Powers, and his friends and teammates.
The one thing that came up over and over again was the importance of making sure that an environment is created, where athletes should feel comfortable, even more comfortable than to seek help for an issue involving their mental health and wellbeing as they do if they had an injury with a knee or
