EIS earmarks more investment for the mental wellbeing of athletes

The organisation behind Team GB’s sport science and medicine programme will plough more of its resource into maintaining the mental health of elite athletes.

In preparing athletes for the Tokyo Olympics over the next four years, the UK Sport-funded English Institute of Sport (EIS) will place an added emphasis on the wellbeing of individuals as well as their performance capabilities and physiological needs.

Talking to Sports Management, EIS national director Nigel Walker said that the organisation was working with an unnamed body which provides clinical psychiatry services to determine whether athletes were showing signs of mental illness.

“One area in which we will be investing more money in the next cycle is athlete wellbeing,” he said. “The welfare of our athletes is paramount and we’ve already made improvements to our mental health referral scheme.”

Walker declined to reveal too many details about the EIS’s wellbeing plans until after Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson concluded her Sport Duty of Care Review – which was called for by the government’s Sporting Future strategy – but was keen to stress that more money would be made available in this area.

To read Sports Management’s full interview with Nigel Walker, click here.