University of California, Los Angeles, Athletics
Ending the Stigma
October 10, 2019 | Bruin Athletics
The following story ran in the 2019 Summer edition of UCLA's official athletic department magazine, Bruin Blue.
By Jon Gold
Kaiya McCullough descends from some impressive UCLA lineage.
Her mother, Amy Thorne, was awarded the first Perfect 10 for a floor routine in Bruins' gymnastics history; her father, Abdul McCullough, was a three-year starting safety for the football team in the early-90s, the last line of defense.
That's what McCullough considers herself, too: The last line of defense.
A dominating center-back, the defensive leader of the UCLA women's soccer team, with 66 career starts under her belt in her first three seasons, McCullough treasures that role. She embodies it. Tough, sturdy. A strong foundation.
The last line of defense. Just you, then the goalie. You can imagine the pressure.
For two-plus years at UCLA, McCullough handled it with grace, with aplomb. Nothing broke her. She doesn't just handle her own stress, she was a vocal mental health advocate on a team that takes such matters very seriously.
Then one day in October, she broke down. She went into her coach's office and, for the first time, cracked. She sobbed to a room full of stunned coaches. This is Kaiya. She doesn't break.
"I was doing my best to convey this image," remembers McCullough. "I'm a center-back, nothing can get through me, the last line of defense. It's like seeing someone who never cries cry. You want to be strong, brave, unstoppable. You want to do your best, always. Admitting weakness seems counteractive to that."
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Ending the stigma. It's one of the UCLA Athletic Department's top priorities.
Around five years ago, Associate Athletic Director Ashley Armstrong sensed a growing pattern emerging. More and more serious mental health cases among student-athletes, and increasingly minor issues that nonetheless resulted in unhappy — and in some cases, sidelined — Bruins.
Since then, every year, Armstrong said the department has sought to increase and improve access to mental-health professionals. She says that over the last three years, UCLA has really tried to zero in on two things: Where are the needs and where is UCLA most vulnerable?
Armstrong and her staff saw a need for more localized treatment options, so they created counseling space in the Acosta Athletic Center. That, in addition to increasing the number of counselors, and improving the training given to coaches, staff and athletic trainers to catch budding problems early, has caused an increasing number of student-athletes to seek treatment.
"To me, mental illness is really a silent epidemic," Armstrong said. "I believe it is, within our country, something that needs attention. It still has so much of that stigma. Athletics is just a microcosm: High-achieving individuals, lots of Type-A personalities, over-achievers, the most talented – they've been told their whole lives."
UCLA — where nearly all of the teams compete for national championships on a regular basis — is a breeding ground for competitive athletes, for world-beaters. That only enhances the pressure.
"They get to college, pressures are more intense, home sickness, not being the best student-athlete on the team, playing time issues, coaching challenges, and the fact that it's not Disneyland every day," Armstrong said. "My coach isn't my best friend in college. Oh and by the way, you have to go to class, balance being a student-athlete with your social life and taking care of yourself. It's a microcosm of what happens in the real world."
Mark Pocinich, UCLA's Associate Athletic Director of Sports Medicine, also said things had reached a tipping point about five years ago.
"That's when I saw a spike," said Pocinich, who oversees all sports medicine for the department, including organizing team physicians, athletic trainers and ancillary providers — including mental-health professionals. "Listen, we knew it was there — for years, we've tried to increase awareness. We know that these student-athletes are already under a certain amount of pressure that most 18- to 22-year olds are dealing with. So we just hit a point where some of this was really sinking in. Maybe an increase in cases, or generational changes or just an awareness that it's okay to talk about it."
Pocinich said it has taken a multi-pronged approach to addressing what is a growing area of concern.
"The services are one piece, but the flip side is the education piece," he said. "We've focused on making sure coaches are aware of this. But the real front lines are my athletic trainers. They spend so much time directly with the athletes. What are the signs? How to speak to athletes, how to educate them."
On the UCLA campus, the message is hitting home.
Some teams, like McCullough's women's soccer team, have taken a proactive approach to mental wellness. The goal? Destigmatize mental health treatment to the point that it becomes like any other athletic treatment.
"We want to prevent injuries, so we do X, Y and Z, whether in the weight room, on the field, we do these things," said women's soccer head coach Amanda Cromwell. "Well, we want to do these things when it concerns mental health, too. We look at it like treatment of an injury."
The team heavily utilizes the Headspace app, which was donated to all teams in the department by former UCLA men's basketball star Kevin Love back in October. They have regular team conversations about life, health and wellness. Sometimes heavier issues.
When a student-athlete for the Utah track team, Lauren McCluskey, was slain, the UCLA women's soccer team — in town for a game against the Utes — attended her memorial as a team.
"Mentally, it was hard for us," Cromwell remembers. "But we wanted to address it, talk about it. We've talked about steps to take to ensure your teammates are safe. So many issues to address, we try to just put things out there, and let people talk."
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Sometimes it takes opening up about one's own weakness that inspires them to help. It did for McCullough.
An offseason injury had robbed her of precious workouts, but even more, it sapped her confidence. She felt a step slower, and a step slower in soccer might as well be a mile. She found herself frustrated, unable to dig out of a mental hole she'd dug. She was starting, but she wasn't ... herself.
If anyone understood the resources on campus, it was her. She could've seen someone sooner, could've revealed herself to coaches.
"I think it's the fear of seeming weak," she said, as to why she held in her stress.
For her coaches, it was a reminder that sometimes the most outspoken of team leaders can be handling inner turmoil.
"I definitely knew she was struggling; we talked about it as a staff," said Cromwell. "I may have blinders on — if someone looks like they're fine, they're fine. I don't think about the duck swimming underwater. Above the surface, everything is fine, but the feet are paddling. I used to think that if I don't see any problems, there aren't any. Now I know that's definitely not true. Some of my highest-functioning, my perfectionist athletes, need me to check in the most."
That word — perfection — is something so many UCLA student-athletes chase. The unattainable, of course.
gymnastics team, is a member of the Bruin Mental Health Advisory
Committee (Photo: Don Liebig/ASUCLA)
Anna Glenn, a member of the 2018 national champion women's gymnastics team, knows what it's like to chase that Perfect 10, not only on the balance beam, but in life. Her internal struggles as a freshman where she admits "I was not taking care of my mental health," caused her to seek help. Her experience served as a catalyst for her to become a vocal mental health advocate on campus. Now a junior, she is a member of both the UCLA Student-Athlete Mentors program and the Bruin Mental Health Advisory Committee.
After reaching out to Towson University gymnast Olivia Lubarsky, who helped create the school's #OwnYourRoar mental health initiative, Glenn was motivated to start a similar campaign at UCLA. One of the first acts was creating a PSA video on YouTube — which features Glenn, McCullough and a host of other Bruin student-athletes — reassuring fellow students that it's OK to discuss their struggles.
"There is work to be done in terms of creating a more open dialogue about mental health," Glenn said. "Most of our conversations are about daily struggles we all deal with, so they know they're not alone. In terms of getting the help, I think that's something we're lacking in the conversation. I have been hearing more recently more coaches have been open in terms of trying to take down that barrier, trying to make conversations a little more open, more comfortable. I feel like it's a slow rise. It's not to the point we want it to be. Some athletes are still afraid to talk to coaches."
McCullough was, until one day, she wasn't.
Now, she knows she can talk to them, and to others, throughout the UCLA Athletic Department.
"I learned it's OK to not be OK," McCullough said. "It's one of the hardest things I've hard to learn. The only way you can see people care is giving them the opportunity to care."
