Last week, on Thursday the 10th of October, SPRINT Project team members Kirsty Brown and Prof Jennifer Cumming attended the Sporting Chance Summit, which is an annual conference targeted at understanding mental health and its impact on performance in professional sport. This year it was held at the Edgbaston Cricket Ground in Birmingham.
Read on to find out more about the conference, and how Kirsty and Jenn got involved and inspired on the day!
The focus for this year’s conference was Applying Best Practice. Speakers included current and former professional athletes, sport psychology researchers, counselling and clinical psychologists, consultant psychiatrists and artists. You can find the full list of speakers here!
As part of the conference, there was an athlete panel, in which rugby league player Micky McIlorum, former British artistic gymnast Nile Wilson and former British track cyclist and jockey Victoria Pendleton shared their experiences of mental health in professional sport.
Image description: A photo of the athlete panel at the Sporting Chance Summit conference.
You can find out about Kirsty’s favourite part of the conference below!
“My highlight of the conference was the talk by Dr Caz Nahman which focused on neurodiversity in sport. This gave me lots and lots of ideas for my PhD on ADHD and athletes.” Kirsty Brown.
Image description: A photo of Kirsty Brown and Prof Jenn Cumming enjoying the Sporting Chance Summit conference.
At the conference, Kirsty presented recent research that she completed as part of her MSc by Research within the poster session. The research focused on a scoping literature review of mental health help seeking in athletes, and found that key factors including attitudes, prior experiences and access influence how athletes seek help for their mental health. You can find out more about this research in this blog post.
Image description: A photo of Kirsty’s research poster which she presented at the Sporting Chance Summit conference.
Image description: A photo of the Edgbaston Cricket Ground in Birmingham, where the Sporting Chance Summit conference was held.
Want to find out more about ADHD and sport, which will be the focus of Kirsty’s PhD? Check out our sport and neurodiversity project page here, where you can find links to blog posts written by Kirsty about ADHD and sport.
You can also find out about our research on mental health and sport here.
Image credit: Prof Jennifer Cumming.
Written by Dr Sally Reynard, Post Doctoral Researcher in the SPRINT Project.
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