MLB hosts biannual Mental Health Meeting for league reps
NEW YORK -- This week, representatives from all 30 Major League clubs, as well as the MLBPA, NFL, NBA, MLS and NHL, came together for the biannual MLB Mental Health Meeting.
In 2023, more players than ever are speaking out about struggling with mental health, including Rockies reliever Daniel Bard, A’s reliever Trevor May and Tigers outfielder Austin Meadows. But mental health clinicians and mental skills coaches have been coming together to collaborate on new initiatives and discuss challenges for years.
“You would think having this many meetings and doing them twice per year that you’d run out of topics, but there's so many things that are connected to mental health,” said Jon Coyles, MLB vice president of Drug, Health and Safety Programs. “The most difficult part is defining what are the topics that our team representatives want to hear and which ones are the most relevant for players right now.”
In the event’s early years, the primary focus was on substance abuse and treatment, but since then, it has expanded to include discussions of all aspects of player mental health. This week’s edition included panel discussions on sleep, cognitive behavioral therapy and how to support coaches and staff.
Former players Dellin Betances, Billy Bean and Joe Martinez hosted a panel to provide an athlete’s perspective on mental health and mental performance support. Dr. Larry Westreich, MLB’s consultant on behavioral health and addiction, said collaboration between the clubs and the MLBPA is “extremely collegial.”
“Our interests are exactly aligned in that they want the best health of their players, and we want the best health of the players including mental health,” Westreich said. “My colleagues at the Players Association, similarly, are clinicians who are looking for the best mental health of their players, and I think we collaborate very, very well.”
The event also featured a panel with representatives from the NFL, NBA and MLS discussing the impact of mental health policy across multiple sports. Each league has its own unique challenges, Coyles said, but solutions can often be effective across leagues with different messaging.
“We've been impressed with their openness to addressing challenges in creative ways, like using telehealth, using a list of approved providers [and] working with their health insurance to make sure people are able to get rapid referrals,” Westreich said. “There’s going to be collaboration going forward. We were just talking about getting a list across the pro sports of clinicians working with a team so we can have a networking system for finding good referrals.”
One of the primary challenges for baseball is making resources available to Minor Leaguers and finding clinicians in Minor League markets that speak Spanish and can treat Spanish-speaking players.
But over time, players, especially young players, have been more open to taking advantage of mental health resources, Coyles said.
“The issues that we had 10, 15 years ago were, how are we going to get our players to take advantage of the resources that we have, and how are we going to develop trust?” Coyles said. “How are we going to get players to proactively take advantage of the assistance, or work on their mental health?
“Mental health is now clearly a priority for players. The question that drives us is, how can we best serve them? We want to keep earning their trust and allow them to continue to utilize the resources available to them. When they’re doing well on and off the field, that’s great for the game, and that’s our motivation.”