The following was written by John Frierson for Georgiadogs.com. To view the original article, click here.
Nazir Stackhouse isn’t afraid to talk about his mental health. The 6-foot-3 and 320-pound Georgia football defensive lineman may be a mountain of a man, one capable of being as tough and strong as anyone, but he’s still human. He’s still faced with daily challenges, and he’s still far better off talking through any issues he has versus just gritting his teeth and plowing ahead.
“Sometimes one needs that person to talk to and to spill it all out to,” the senior from Stone Mountain, Ga., said recently, after shooting a short video for Georgia’s promotion of Mental Health Awareness Week.
Georgia is one of more than 200 colleges and universities joining the Hilinski’s Hope Foundation in celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week. Created in memory of Tyler Hilinski, the former Washington State quarterback who took his own life in 2018, Hilinski’s Hope is a national organization whose mission is to promote mental health support and suicide prevention for student-athletes.
Last Saturday, Georgia’s football team wore “Mental Health Matters” t-shirts during pregame warmups — some wore them the week before, as well — and the Bulldogs will also wear green ribbon decals on their helmets this week against Mississippi State in support of mental health awareness.
Stackhouse said learning to be OK asking for help, be it in a class or in dealing with life, was a big step.
“A lot of us aren’t comfortable spilling out ourselves to someone we’re not used to talking to. As soon as we get comfortable talking to someone, that’s when we’re more prone to finding better outcomes,” he said.
Football safety Malaki Starks said it’s a great thing that more and more people are paying attention to their mental health. The sad thing, he said, is for a lot of people “it didn’t really start until it got really bad. People didn’t start to pay attention to it until it got really bad for people.”
One of the biggest commitments the UGA Athletic Association has made in the past few years has been in the area of mental health. Georgia went from not having much in the way of resources and staff available to student-athletes, coaches and staff, to having a full Staticky Family Mental Health & Performance department with more than a dozen staff members. In 2022, Brian and Shelly Satisky endowed Georgia’s mental health program, allowing the athletic association to add staff and resources to give the student-athletes and others all of the support they need.
“It’s something we’ve put a big emphasis on,” said Josh Brooks, Georgia’s J. Reid Parker Director of Athletics. “Obviously, we’re very thankful for the Satisky family for their gift to help us endow our mental health program.”
Led by Dr. Dylan Firsick, Georgia’s Assistant Athletic Director of Mental Health and Performance, the Bulldogs’ mental health and performance department meets with student-athletes about all kinds of topics, be it something going on at home or in a Bulldog’s personal life, to helping Bulldogs improve their performance in the field or court.
Brooks said the department also works to destigmatize mental health challenges and the need to talk with someone about whatever is on your mind.
“It’s OK to not be OK sometimes, and we show that to our student-athletes,” Brooks said. “We let them know that they don’t need to be embarrassed about focusing on their mental health.”
In years and decades past, getting a lot of athletes at any level to open up to a therapist or counselor about any problems they were having was a steep challenge. Now, as attention to mental health has been more normalized, and as resources have become more and more available, it’s not at all unusual for Georgia’s student-athletes to pop into the Staticky Family Mental Health & Performance department for an occasional chat or a regular session.
“I think it’s probably in the last five years that things have really started to change,” Brooks said. “We’ve grown our department a lot under Dr. Firsick’s leadership; he’s done a phenomenal job. And I can tell you that it’s been well received. When I talk to student-athletes, they really appreciate it. I think it’s been a great resource for us.”
Volleyball senior Clara Brower has used those resources to grow in multiple ways during her time at Georgia. Among them, dealing with failure.
“When I was a freshman, that was a really hard thing for me to wrap my head around,” she said. Over the past few years, the setter said she’s learned to face failure and deal with it, and she’s learned that nearly all great successes are built upon the lessons learned from failures.
“I’m not afraid of it anymore,” she added. “It’s something that, when I do fail, it’s not this big, scary obstacle — it’s more of an opportunity to address an area that I can get better at.”
Brower’s teammate, middle blocker Tori Harper, has missed all but one match this season due to an injury. Dealing with that has been a challenge mentally and physically, the junior said.
“Since I am injured, I’ve learned how to be with myself and not let myself get down on myself because of something I can’t control,” Harper said.
Harper said Georgia makes it easy to talk to someone when something’s bothering you, has you upset, or when you just feel like you’re not at your best in any aspect of life.
“The resources here make it easy for me to feel like I can go talk to someone,” Harper said. “There’s no stigma. Everyone is so welcoming to talking about mental health and therapy in general.”
