Even Olympians battle impostor syndrome. How one Team USA psychologist is supporting athletes’ mental health in Paris
In the mid-2010s, Jason Kidd and Kweku Smith, PhD, overlapped at the Milwaukee Bucks, the former as head coach and the latter as the NBA team’s psychologist. According to Smith, Kidd, a two-time Olympian who helped the U.S. men’s basketball team win gold in 2000 and 2008, would challenge the players and other coaches by asking how they could get better every day. Kidd eventually turned the question on Smith: What was his dream?
“I said, ‘Well, maybe one day, me and you go back to the Olympics—you as a coach and me as the team psychologist—and we win another gold medal,’” Smith tells Fortune, noting he’d been half-joking. “For it to really come back full circle, but in a different manner, was a manifestation, a dream come true.”
Kidd, now head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, isn’t headed to the Summer 2024 Games in Paris; the Golden State Warriors’ Steve Kerr will coach Team USA. Smith, however, will make his Olympic debut in the City of Light less than a year after joining the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee as a psychological services provider.
“My No. 1 goal is to do anything I can do to help the American athletes—and even athletes from other regions who may not have some people in our [field]—to give them the best service possible,” Smith tells Fortune. “They set us up in a position where we can do that, where we may work long hours some days, but we’ll be able to recoup because there’s so many of us to be able to do a proper rotation.”
Smith says he and his colleagues will be on call 24/7 throughout the Olympics and Paralympics, ready to tend to athletes’ mental health whether they’re in crisis or just need to bend an ear. Athletes are also free to schedule an appointment with a psychologist, or flag one down in the Olympic Village or the arena where they’re competing. Staff are there to support Team USA without judgment, aiming to reduce stigma in the process.
“Mental health is in the same realm as physical health. In fact, it’s one and the same,” Smith says. “You can’t separate physical health from mental health and mental health from physical health, and I think that’s one of the things that really benefits the athletes. If our goal is to make sure that we have the best athletes, we want to make sure we not only have the best medical care but that we also have the best emotional care.”
Athletes needn’t wait until they’re mentally or emotionally struggling to consult a team psychologist, Smith stresses.
“When we talk about mental health, people think of it from an illness standpoint but they don’t think about it from a wellness [standpoint],” Smith says. “What are those things that we can do proactively just to keep them happy? Because I believe that you can create a better person, you can create a better athlete. So if we can give them some strategies in day-to-day life, that pays dividends in the sports world.”
Courtesy of Figs
Superhuman athleticism meets human emotion
If you’ve ever been an athlete yourself, whether you played on a high school sports team or compete in an adult recreational league, you’ve likely experienced pregame jitters or felt like a failure when you didn’t perform as well as you had hoped. Now, imagine processing those feelings in a global spotlight. Having already overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to qualify for the Olympics, U.S. athletes have hurdles yet to jump as the Games begin.
“They’re human. The only caveat is they live in a world that most people don’t live in,” Smith says. “Most people don’t have the additional pressure of the whole world seeing them fail or the whole world seeing them at a down time.”
In addition to practicing clinical psychology, Team USA’s psychological services staff are certified mental performance consultants, Smith says. This CMPC designation, according to the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, means the health care providers are specially trained to help athletes with problems such as performance anxiety and injury recovery.
“In an Olympic environment where nerves, anxiety, second thoughts, impostor syndrome may come up,” Smith says, “it’s good to have somebody to reinforce the confidence that they once had but might have faded for a moment, where they just needed to be reminded, to hear those special words at the right time to trigger everything that they’ve already worked and done.”
Smith adds, “Our goal is to let them know it’s not anything special that we do, except to remind them how special they are, and to do what they were born and built to do, and are trained to do.”
The Paris Games mark not only Smith’s first Olympics but also a novelty in fashion and sports medicine. Smith is among the more than 250 health care professionals who make up the Team USA medical team, and for the first time, they have an official Olympics uniform. The scrubs were designed by medical-apparel brand Figs, which last week launched an ad campaign called “Anatomy of a Champion.” Smith appears in the video, advising a patient to visualize himself conquering a problem.
When Smith’s patient athletes succeed, their wins become his, if only a bit. After all, he says, they’re the ones who invested in their own mental health.
“You had to seek out the services, you had to accept the services, you had to implement those things,” Smith tells Fortune. “I look at it like, wow, they achieved their dream, and if I could be a small part in helping to influence that, then that’s where the big smile comes.”
If you need immediate mental health support, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
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