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Correspondence to Dr Claudia L Reardon, Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI 53719, USA; [email protected]
Background
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) convened a consensus meeting on 12–14 November 2018 in Lausanne, Switzerland, at which experts reviewed the scientific literature addressing mental health symptoms and disorders in elite athletes. The participants analysed the current best evidence to provide a consensus statement for clinical practice and individual and systemic interventions to improve mental health among elite athletes. We define elite athletes as those competing at professional, Olympic or collegiate levels. Collegiate athletes often train and compete at levels similar to professional athletes, and including them expands the research we can draw on for this paper.
The group was charged with the following tasks:
to review the literature describing prevalence, diagnosis and impact on athletic performance of mental health symptoms and disorders within elite athletes
to review the literature describing and establishing recommendations for non-pharmacological and pharmacological management of mental health symptoms and disorders in elite athletes
to provide recommendations on how to minimise negative impacts of the sport environment on mental health symptoms and disorders in elite athletes.
This consensus paper fulfils the IOC charge by addressing the multifaceted aspects of mental health symptoms and disorders in elite athletes. The intended audience includes sport and exercise medicine physicians and other clinicians (including physiotherapists and athletic trainers), psychiatrists and other licensed mental health providers, other mental health and performance professionals who work with elite athletes, researchers in the fields of elite athlete mental health and clinical or institutional leaders/administrators who are stakeholders in sport.
Methods
Planning for the consensus meeting began in June 2017 (figure 1). The initial organising group included IOC leadership (RB and LE) and the meeting co-chairs (CLR and BH). They identified members of an expert panel, comprised of 23 individuals from 13 nations with expertise in the mental health of elite athletes. Panellists were identified based on their publications in the past 5 years, as determined by a literature search, and invited based on their clinical and/or scientific understanding of specific topics concerning mental health symptoms and disorders in elite athletes.
The meeting work group included the invited panel of experts, the organising committee members, four...