Think about how we treat other areas of performance. Nobody has to convince an elite sports organization that athletes need a weight room. We understand the importance of athletic training and sports medicine. Nutrition has increasingly become an expected part of a strong performance program. Yet when the conversation moves to mental health, we’ve historically treated it differently. I like to think about mental performance as the weight room for the mind and mental health services as the athletic training room for the mind. I’ll come back to that distinction because I think it helps explain why we need both.

Some of the resistance may come from fear. What happens if an athlete starts talking to someone and realizes they need to step away? What happens if the clinician recommends something that conflicts with what the coach or organization wants? What’s being discussed behind that closed door? There can be discomfort with confidentiality because coaches and performance staffs are accustomed to having access to information about nearly every aspect of an athlete’s preparation and physical health. But that confidential space is part of what makes mental health care work. If an athlete believes every conversation is going to make its way back to a coach or administrator, how honest can we expect them to be?

Then there’s the stigma that’s followed mental health for generations. Elite athletics has historically celebrated the ability to push through discomfort, block out distractions, and keep going regardless of what’s happening around you. There’s value in developing toughness and resilience. The problem comes when toughness gets confused with ignoring a legitimate health concern. We’d never tell an athlete that getting treatment for a hamstring makes them physically weak. Seeking qualified help for anxiety, depression, grief, stress, relationships, identity, or other mental health challenges shouldn’t suddenly change that standard.

There’s another layer being added to the conversation today. Mental health terminology has become part of our everyday language, our social media profiles, and sometimes our political and cultural arguments. People can attach labels such as “soft” to conversations about anxiety, depression, therapy, or mental health advocacy. On the other side, clinical terminology can sometimes be used casually enough that serious conditions lose some of their meaning. Neither extreme helps the athlete who actually needs support. Mental health isn’t a political identity, a personality trait, or a measure of toughness. It’s part of health.

This brings me back to the distinction I mentioned earlier. Mental performance and mental health overlap, but they’re not interchangeable. Mental performance is the weight room for the mind. We can train focus, confidence, preparation, resilience, emotional regulation, and execution because we want those skills to be strong before an athlete needs them in competition. Mental health services are more like the athletic training room for the mind. Sometimes we’re maintaining health. Sometimes we’re addressing an issue. Sometimes we’re helping someone return to full function. Just as a strength coach and athletic trainer serve different but complementary roles in physical performance, mental performance professionals and licensed mental health clinicians bring different expertise to the athlete.

The NFL and other organizations that have established requirements around mental health services deserve credit for creating a baseline of care. But mandates should be the floor, not the reason these professionals are in the building. I think about the evolution of sports nutrition. There was a time when having a full-time sports dietitian was far from standard in collegiate and professional athletics. Over time, organizations recognized that nutrition could contribute to recovery, availability, development, and performance. It stopped being viewed simply as another service for athletes and started being recognized as an asset to the performance program. Mental health services should be viewed through that same lens.

The best organizations should want great mental health professionals as part of their health and performance teams. They should want athletes who know how to ask for help before a challenge becomes a crisis. They should want qualified professionals who understand the unique pressures of elite sport and can support athletes through injury, performance struggles, family issues, transitions, grief, anxiety, and everything else they carry with them when they walk into the facility. We spend enormous amounts of time and resources looking for an edge in sports. We invest in training, nutrition, recovery, technology, facilities, and data because we believe those things can help athletes perform. Mental health belongs in that conversation too. We shouldn’t need a mandate to recognize its value.