Recommendations to promote mental health in dual career development environments: An integrated knowledge translation approach

Abstract

A dual career (DC) entails the combination of elite sport with a second career in education or work. Engaging in a DC has considerable short and long-term benefits for elite athletes. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that DC engagement can also be highly demanding and pose a challenge for athletes’ mental health. As such, dual career development environments (DCDEs), aimed to facilitate effective DC engagement, hold a responsibility to promote and safeguard athletes’ mental health within their organization. Given a lack of guidance within the literature to set up effective support systems, the purpose of our paper is to provide a comprehensive set of mental health recommendations for applied DCDEs. Adopting an integrated knowledge translation approach, the recommendations were developed based on a multiple case analysis of seven DCDEs, followed by a two-day working group with applied and academic experts within the fields of mental health and DC. In total, 12 key recommendations are provided across four overarching domains. These four domains include: organizational foundations, monitoring and follow-up, mental health literacy, and preventive well-being interventions.