Final Paper
The Hidden Opponent
Brylie R Nedd
Texas Lutheran University
COMM 339: Social Media and Society
Dr. Steve Vrooman
May 9, 2024
The topic of mental health in college sports has gathered increasing attention in recent years, with growing recognition of the unique stressors and challenges faced by student-athletes. The emergence of online platforms as a space for discourse presents an opportunity to examine how mental health issues within this context are portrayed, discussed, and perceived. Throughout this paper I will be discussing my project, beginning first with explaining my research in my literature review. I will discuss what we already know about stress causing mental health issues within the world of sports, as well as the reasoning behind why there is a stigma associated with this topic, and I will also provide information about the account in which I analyzed. Then I will explain my method and go into depth about how I conducted my analysis and findings. Lastly, I will deep dive into my data and explain everything that I discovered while conducting this research.
Stress in College Athletics
When we look at mental health within college sports, information regarding their intense amount of stress is prevalent. College is a stressful time in general. Most students often struggle to navigate their way through a new environment. It has been proven that college students perceive their causes of academic stress in four categories: perceptions of workload, pressure to perform, academic self-perceptions, and time restrictions (Bedewy and Gabriel, 2015). This holds true for all college students, athletes or not. Add in the additional stressors that college athletes endure on top of those, and we can understand the reasoning behind their mental decline. “Stress caused by academic pressures exists among nearly all college students, but student-athletes’ stress levels are compounded by their athletic expectations, time commitments, and heavy travel schedules” (Jill w. Lassiter, Amanda L Campbell, Carrie W LeCrom, Brendan Dwyer, 2022, p. 150). Athletes are required to juggle not only the demands of a newly adapted college lifestyle but also those of a professional athlete as well. They are expected to put forth an extensive amount of effort into practices every day, maintain an adequate GPA, and adapt to a new living situation, all while dealing with a heavy travel schedule. Furthermore, college athletes are often held to higher expectations than that of regular college students, which ultimately leads to performance anxiety. This occurs when a large amount of stress is placed on an athlete, and it negatively affects their performance (Winik, 2021). “With pressures to perform in the game, as well as in the rest of their public lives, being an athlete can be incredibly challenging for a person’s mental health” (McMillan, 2022, para 3). So as a result of these stressors, we are seeing fewer athletes who are satisfied with their experience and more athletes finding the 4 years of college a struggle that they must endure. The American College of Sports Medicine states that approximately 30% of women and 25% of men who are student-athletes report having anxiety. (American College of Sports Medicine, 2021) Furthermore, research has found that 85% of female and 95% of male student-athletes have higher stress levels compared to 52% of non-athlete students. (Kindbridge, 2022) This is important to look at because we must understand the prevalence of mental health issues within college sports in order to continue working through this research.
Stigma
The rare times discussion occurs about mental health within sports, we have often heard the word “stigma” being used. What this refers to is the idea that this topic is not talked about enough. Athletes feel as though they have to hide their feelings and struggles. Stigma often occurs from a lack of understanding of mental illness, through ignorance and misinformation. Additionally, it can also arise due to the negative attitudes or beliefs some people have towards mental illness (Healthdirect Australia, n.d, 2023). With this being said, athletes are often afraid to admit they have a problem and reach out for help. For example, student-athletes who suffer from mental illness or who seek psychological services may fear being stereotyped as weak or incompetent (Watson, Corrigan, Larson, & Sells, 2007). This is where the stigma comes into play. Looking at what’s already out there regarding the media and mental health stigma, it’s interesting to note the media’s contribution to mental illness stigma. We see this through the exaggerated, inaccurate, and comical images used to portray people with psychiatric disorders as well as providing incorrect information about mental illness (Wahl, 1995). So, I tell you all of this in order to emphasize the importance of talking about mental health related to sports on social media. Social media has the capability of reaching a large audience if it is used in the right way. The more athletes see or hear it being talked about, especially online, the more likely they are to internalize that positively.
The Hidden Opponent
The Hidden Opponent is an accredited non-profit and advocacy group that raises awareness for student-athlete mental health and addresses the stigma within sports culture (thehiddenopponent.org, 2019). This started back in 2017 when former University of Southern California volleyball player, Victoria Browne, gave a TED Talk, “Mental Health in Athletics: The Hidden Opponent”. Since then, Browne has become an advocate for mental health and body image through her platforms (thehiddenopponent.org, 2019). This website ultimately expanded to social media, where they post about all things mental health and sports-related. Their goal is to break the stigma and create a safe space where athletes can feel comfortable discussing their struggles. The topic of mental health within college sports is slowly becoming more talked about. In fact, in 2023 the NCAA started Mental Health Mondays. This allowed for content pertaining to mental health and college sports to be posted and gain more discussion (NCAA.org, 2023). This is paving the way for accounts such as TheHiddenOpponent to help break the stigma. The goal of my research was to analyze the interactions with TheHiddenOpponent’s Instagram account to understand the impact these posts have on its audience. By examining how people respond to the content, I assessed the effectiveness of this account in influencing perceptions and behaviors related to mental health issues in sports. This study is crucial for advancing our understanding of digital advocacy’s role in lowering the stigma associated with mental health discussions. It is essential for us to evaluate whether such public advocacy efforts are contributing to a positive change. This analysis will help determine if and how digital platforms can serve as effective tools in the fight against the mental health stigma.
Method
The data collection process focused on the Instagram account "TheHiddenOpponent". The account primarily features posts related to mental health, wellness, and overcoming challenges in athletics. To ensure a comprehensive analysis, I gathered data spanning from the last 4 months (February 2024-May 2024). In order to gauge users' responses accurately, I used sentiment analysis on the selected comments. I employed a sentiment analysis model tailored to social media data, enabling the classification of comments into positive, negative, or neutral sentiments. Once I began reading through comments on the 4 posts that I selected, I began trying to sort them using grounded theory. I analyzed each post, looking for reoccurring themes and words that would help me decide if each comment was either positive, negative or neutrally related to the post. This method was helpful and allowed me to really break down each comment and uncover a lot of information. What I discovered ended up being so much deeper than what I intended when I first began this project. Since this account is active on Instagram, there was a plethora of posts I could choose from to analyze. Therefore, I decided to analyze the ones that not only have an underlying topic of mental health but also the ones with the most interactions. So, posts with a lot of likes or comments. I felt that this was the option that would provide me with the most amount of accurate data to analyze.
Sentiment analysis is known as the process of identifying and categorizing opinions expressed in a piece of text, especially in order to determine the writer’s attitude toward a particular topic, product, etc. I originally chose to use this because my goal was to see if this account was having a positive impact on its audience. Throughout my data-collecting process, posts that I categorized as having positive sentiment included comments expressing approval, appreciation, or agreement with the post.Additionally, the posts that I categorized as having negative sentiment included comments displaying disapproval, criticism, or disagreement with the post. Lastly, posts that were put in the category ofneutral sentiment included comments lacking detail or containing generic responses.
Following sentiment analysis, I aggregated the results to generate insights into users' responses to "TheHiddenOpponent" posts. These included: quantitative analysis, which means that I quantified the distribution of positive, negative, and neutral sentiments across the collected comments. Additionally, qualitative analysis was also included, in which selected comments were organized into recurring themes and trends.
Additionally, I not only analyzed the comments in the 4 posts with the most interactions, but I also analyzed the posts themselves. I sort of created my own method of analysis for this part in order to be able to conduct the exact type of research that I was going for. I looked at how the picture, message, and captions were crafted and how that affected the discussions in the comment section. This ultimately helped shift my perspective of this project and form my thesis statement, which I will discuss in the analysis and findings section.
Throughout the study, ethical guidelines were strictly followed, ensuring data confidentiality. Comments were analyzed in aggregate form and no personally identifiable information was disclosed.
Analysis and Findings
As I mentioned in the method section above, I reached a certain point in my research where my perspective shifted. My original goal for this project was to analyze the Instagram account and determine if the followers felt like this was having a positive impact on them. However, what I ended up discovering was so much deeper than that. I came to the conclusion that The Hidden Opponent Instagram account serves as a vital platform for individuals to openly express their personal thoughts and experiences related to mental health, providing a safe and supportive environment that helps to destigmatize discussions surrounding mental well-being. By creating educational content and resources, The Hidden Opponent contributes significantly to the ongoing effort to dismantle the stigma surrounding mental health. This is one of the first, and few, places where current and former athletes feel safe enough to share their personal experiences and stories in a public environment, which is practically unheard of.
I want to first look at how The Hidden Opponent crafts their content to their audience. They create educational, informational, and emotional posts that allow for their page to become a resource. Let’s take a look at some examples.
35.2k likes and 316 comments
(The Hidden Opponent, 2024)
This was the first post that I analyzed, and it displays a picture of an NCAA microphone followed by a fact underneath it that talks about how suicide is now the second leading cause of death among NCAA athletes. In smaller print underneath that, it says surpassed only by accidents. The next pictures in the post include facts and quotes about suicide. While I was analyzing this post, I noticed a lot of “negative” comments. Some were saying how awful this was and how coaches need to be better. I also saw a consistent number of heartbreak emoji’s (💔) I noticed that while people weren’t necessarily commenting negative things, but their comments typically had negative connotations because this post is sort of categorized as negative. After all, there is definitely nothing positive about suicide. So, this wasn’t necessarily giving me the results that I wanted. However, this is the post where my mindset for this project shifted. I noticed that I had a lot of comments listed in the neutral category. So, I went back and re-read all of them and discovered an underlying commonality between (almost) all of them. This was the fact that so many people were sharing their own experiences. I noticed so many comments with the words “I” “my” and ‘me”. After discovering this, I concluded that this post was crafted so well, that Instagram users felt compelled enough to share their own experiences with this topic. This is huge because, before this account, it was very rare for people to feel comfortable sharing such vulnerable information about their mental health online, especially athletes. I wanted to attach the charts I put together from each post so that the engagement is correctly correlated to the success and purpose of each of the posts. I will be going into deeper depth of the comment section later on in this paper.
Positive Neutral Negative
I saw a whole lot of NCAA commercials during March Madness talking about how they are bolstering mental health support. Looking forward to seeing these initiatives… 🙏 | It’s not the media pressure, it’s the abuse from the coaches that many universities turn a blind eye to. Too many athletes are ending their career; or in serious cases their lives because of how awful some people make it feel while being a collegiate athlete. Coaches should be trained on things like mental health because even just one life is too many to lose | 💔 💔 |
You aren’t defined by what you do, where you are or the goals you meet or don’t meet. Your life is priceless and you are loved beyond measure. Being a student athlete is extremely difficult and there is no real way around that. I pray that all student athletes find their community as well as a support system wherever they are. More importantly know that they are irreplaceable and loved beyond their accomplishments or shortcomings. Without playing a single minute you are worth it. Without winning a single match you are worth it! | As a juco athlete who used to hoop, getting cut from a coach after communicating my mental health made it ten times worse and I lost all motivation to even touch a basketball game. Coaches never really provide the help or support their athlete needs until it’s too late then after that they wanna take action. I was lucky enough to still pursue my season with track which helped me along the way after getting cut from the basketball team being told I wasn’t a good fit and that I needed to find help on my own. Athletes go through so much at a young age that the transition to college sports isn’t easy. This has to be recognized!!!!! | This is horrific. What will the NCAA do to protect our athletes? |
I’m so glad a lot of colleges are employing mental health professionals for their athletes. I’m hopeful we’ll see more positions in the colleges without them. | As a former D1, and someone who currently works in suicide prevention — this breaks my heart. | Coaches need training. Abuse in any form is not acceptable |
| Such important research but so sad. My college xc athlete (male) struggles and I hope this will help him to know he is not alone | It’s only getting worse.. more coaches need to be trained on how to not only coach but to build confidence. Too often they strip the love of the game out of the kids souls -so sad!!! |
| playing football my freshman year of college I fell into a depression state. It’s the lack of initiatives in the programs to provide athletes with a secure foundation in all aspects. Most athletes already either go to the school from high school or transfer to gain a better chance of succeeding in their careers. Athletes aren’t being provided with a safety net at all knowing that their time and health is being devoted into the sport they play | This is huge and a real problem for athletes. Athlete mental health resources and support must grow now |
| Coming from personal experience with our daughter who plays softball, I also wonder if the rate of concussions isn't a factor, as well. She had existing issues but has not been the same after suffering from whiplash and a concussion on the field. It is absolutely heartbreaking to watch someone suffer through this battle. We have been thankful we saw the signs before it reached a tragic outcome. Sadly, collegiate athletes are not near those closest people who may be better at seeing the changes in behavior. Talking about it is just touching the surface. We need to keep conversation going to bring awareness. |
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As you can see, this post is informative eye-catching, and compelling enough to prompt people to share their experiences on the internet.
The next post I want to discuss is similar in purpose to the previous one. I have attached a screenshot of it below.
67.1k likes and 170 comments
(The Hidden Opponent, 2024)
This post is actually a video of the founder, Victoria Browne, herself. In this video, she talks about the difference between mental health and mental toughness. If you look right below the picture, you should notice the fact that this post received 67.1k likes. So immediately it is obvious that this post was very popular. It seems that a lot of people resonated with what she was saying. It is a huge deal for people to even “like” posts like that because that is still a form of endorsement. They are putting their name in relation to this post and showing the public that they agree with what is being said. I went ahead and looked even deeper into the post and analyzed the comments as well.
Positive Neutral Negative
| Not knowing the difference between the two was the reason my physical performance was terrible for two whole seasons. We looked for injuries everywhere physically but nothing came up on xrays or MRIs. Even echocardiograms and EKGs. Crazy how it’ll reflect in your performance just like a physical injury except you can’t see it 🤯 | Men… don’t….. cry…. I front of anyone nor publicly….. so your mental health perception only works on women…. This is how we were made back in the day… |
Never heard it put like this before, well done! Wish i had these resources when i was a college athlete 👏 | As a mom of 3 athletes and a coach, this is the realest and most relatable thing I’ve heard. You’re impact is going to be special 💯 |
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| Oh my gosh I needed this connection for my time as a student athlete. It always felt like mental toughness |
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| So good! Though in college my mental health was struggling but practices and that mental toughness is what helped me through and made everything else feel ok and doable |
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so well said 👏 also wish someone told me this when I was a student athlete!! |
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Again, this post was crafted for a specific target audience and had a clear purpose of informing and advocating, and the audience responded well to this. This post is educational, as well as a resource for all of its viewers. It is content like this that is the reasoning behind the success of this account.
2,436 likes and 18 comments
(The Hidden Opponent. 2024)
This post entailed a total of 7 different attachments. Each slide contains different information about an athlete’s identity after their sport and potential tips/advice for coaches. Again, this post contributes to the collection of well-crafted posts aimed toward a specific audience. Because of posts like these that engage their viewers, we can see how this creates an overall better platform for The Hidden Opponent. I have attached a copy of my chart from the comment section below.
Positive Neutral Negative
This is great 💚 | Absolutely! As a retired college runner, immediately into retirement I struggled with a healthy relationship with exercise. It took years to be ok with light movement rather than intense multi-hour training I was accustomed to for two decades. It truly is a form of complex grief | i struggle at 42 and not playing - coaching sorta helps though |
This is powerful. Thank you for sharing | I'm currently in this moment and I have to say that is crucial to prepare for it and we would need more pages like this, speaking about it 🔥🙌thanks! |
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💚💚 | I know I experienced these feelings and things. I was in a really bad headspace and it took me nearly a year to figure out who I am without my sports |
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This is fantastic 👏 |
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The last post that I analyzed was a picture of Katie Meyer, the women’s soccer goalie for Stanford University who unfortunately died by suicide. The picture was posted in her remembrance.
19.7k likes and 527 comments
(The Hidden Opponent, 2024)
The caption of this photo asked people to comment with a red heart in order to send love to Katie’s family, and sure enough, the comment section was flooded with red hearts. This further proves that The Hidden Opponent knows how to craft their posts to convey important and meaningful messages to their followers and create a connection between them. I have attached my chart of comments that I created from this post below.
Positive Neutral Negative
| ❤️ My daughter Jayden, a D2 athlete passed a month after Katie in her dorm room. Her University has stepped up and put a very important mental health support system in place for their student athletes. The impact that these beautiful ladies have made after their deaths will surely save lives in the future. Much love to the Meyer family on this very hard anniversary. There's no words to describe the pain of losing your child in this way. Keep fighting for changes in the way we deal with mental health issues! #suicidesucks | Her story & loss heartbreaking 😢 |
no one know what our girls/boys go through as D1 Athletes my daughter Red Shirted last year for mental health ❤️ may Katie Rest In Eternal Peace and I will pray for her family and this cause for their horrific loss! 🕊️✨🤍 | ❤️ praying and sending love. |
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so needed- students need an extra support sometimes | ❤️❤️❤️ |
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thank you for sharing! This is SO critically important! |
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So, now that we have reflected on some of The Hidden Opponent’s most popular posts and discussed the importance of the way they create them, I want to discuss how these posts foster a community on this account. I first noticed the sense of community that is created by this account when I was analyzing the Instagram post about Katie Meyer. As I mentioned before, the comment section was flooded with thousands of red hearts (❤️). This alone demonstrates the society that was formed. People wanted to show their love and support through this post. Then, I noticed it went a step further. I discovered that this post was a gateway for others to share their own stories. I observed comments talking about people opening up about their own struggles with suicide, or how they lost somebody important to them. Here is an example of a comment that demonstrates the sense of togetherness and community that The Hidden Opponent creates. Instagram user @jamiebrz says “❤️praying and sending love. No words are good enough for grief. I have struggled with suicide and that loneliness. And even reaching out to not be helped. (This was as an adult in corporate America). I will say 988 is safe and without judgment, but you need a safe person. We all do. I never want someone to feel alone like I did.” (The Hidden Opponent, 2024) This is not easy to talk about, especially online! Another one of similar substance by user @chrissyhill70, says “❤️ My daughter Jayden, a D2 athlete passed a month after Katie in her dorm room. Her university has stepped up and put a very important mental health support system in place for their student-athletes. The impact that these beautiful ladies have made after their deaths will surely save lives in the future…” (The Hidden Opponent, 2024) Both of these comments serve as excellent examples of the way people are responding to the content that The Hidden Opponent is producing. They feel so drawn to this post and the message it is conveying, that they feel comfortable sharing their personal experiences. It does not stop there; these types of comments are seen on all of the posts I analyzed during this project. Another example includes a comment from @kreugur that states, “Playing football my freshman year of college I fell into a depression state. It’s the lack of initiatives in the programs to provide athletes with a secure foundation in all aspects. Most athletes already either go to the school from high school or transfer to gain a better chance of succeeding in their careers. Athletes aren’t being provided with a safety net at all knowing that their time and health is being devoted into the sport they play” (The Hidden Opponent, 2024). Even less intense comments such as “OOOOF THIS HITS HOME” and “This is too real” are consistently reoccurring on a lot of posts as well. All of this further proves my point that The Hidden Opponent is doing what it set out to do, advocate for mental health issues in college sports. They have created this sense of community that allows people to feel comfortable enough to share some deep thoughts and feelings. This was unheard of before this account existed, due to the stigma that surrounds this topic. Now, this account has created a place where people, athletes specifically, can come to share and relate to other posts or comments, without feeling too anxious about it. This is a HUGE step in the right direction toward breaking the stigma. This account is getting people to talk about these topics and athletes are learning that there are others out there who feel the same way that they do.
Lastly, I want to discuss the question that probably comes to everyone’s minds when they read this and that is: How do we know this is actually working? Well, I think the comments speak for themselves in answering that because people are literally saying thank you. @daryldhahir says, “Thank you for sharing! This is SO critically important!” (The Hidden Opponent, 2024), and @drcoachrees commented, “This is powerful. Thank you for sharing” (The Hidden Opponent, 2024). Furthermore, people have begun to pay attention to this topic in other places as well. @leeannp27 says, “I saw a whole lot of NCAA commercials during March Madness talking about how they are bolstering mental health support. Looking forward to seeing these initiatives… 🙏” (The Hidden Opponent, 2024). So not only are people internalizing the information that The Hidden Opponent is putting out there, but they are also looking for ways to make changes as well, which is a BIG deal! This is how the stigma gets broken, by getting people to not only care about these issues but also advocate for them.
Ultimately, The Hidden Opponent has done some impressive work with their platform. They have not only accomplished their goal of supporting this topic, but they have also simultaneously created a space where others feel safe and confident sharing their own stories. They have taken major steps toward not only getting more focus on this topic but also getting more people to engage in conversation about it. The Hidden Opponent has a bright future ahead of them. If they continue moving at the same pace, we might start to see a significant change in the sports community really soon.
Reference List
American College of Sports Medicine. (2021, August 9). The American College of Sports Medicine statement on mental health challenges for athletes. ACSM. https://www.acsm.org/news-detail/2021/08/09/the-american-college-of-sports-medicine-statement-on-mental-health-challenges-for-athletes
Bedewy, D., & Gabriel, A. (2015). Examining perceptions of academic stress and its sources among university students: The Perception of Academic Stress Scale. Health Psychology Open, 2(2), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055102915596714
Browne, V. (2019). Home | The Hidden Opponent. The Hidden Opponent. https://www.thehiddenopponent.org/#:~:text=The%20Hidden%20Opponent%20is%20an. Accessed 22 Apr. 2024.
Healthdirect Australia. (n.d.). Mental illness stigma. Healthdirect. https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/mental-illness-stigma
Kindbridge. (2022, October 11). Common mental health issues in college student athletes. Behavioral Health Services with Kindbridge. https://kindbridge.com/mental-health/common-mental-health-issues-in-college-student-athletes/
Lassiter, J. W., Campbell, A. L., LeCrom, C. W., & Dwyer, B. (2022). The impact of academic disruption on stress among college athletes. Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, 15, Article 26.
McMillan, B. (2019, May 14). Mental health and athletes. Athletes for Hope. https://www.athletesforhope.org/2019/05/mental-health-and-athletes/ Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.
NCAA. (n.d.). Mental health social media campaign. https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2020/3/27/mental-health-social-media-campaign.aspx.
Wahl, O. F. (1995). Media madness: Public images of mental illness. Rutgers University Press.
Watson, A. C., Corrigan, P., Larson, J. E., & Sells, M. (2007). Self-stigma in people with mental illness. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 33(6), 1312-1318. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbl076
Winik, A. (2021, August 2). Performance anxiety and burnout in student athletes: Q&A with Allison Winik, PhD. Columbia University Irving Medical Center. https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/performance-anxiety-and-burnout-student-athletes-q-allison-winik-phd
The Hidden Opponent [@thehiddenopponent]. (2024, April 10). [Suicide now second leading…]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/C5mMFVvykt_/?img_index=1
The Hidden Opponent [@thehiddenopponent]. (2024, March 4). [Mental Health VS Mental Toughness…]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/C4HROg1xrp-/
The Hidden Opponent [@thehiddenopponent]. (2024, March 14). [How coaches can prepare…]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/C4gr4D_P8hD/?img_index=1
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