Suicide Prevention, NIL Pressures, and the Future of Athlete Mental Health | Dr. Kweku Amoasi

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SportsEpreneur

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Hello, Athlete Mindset community.

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This is Lisa Bontasumi, the host of Athlete Mindset.

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Hey, Athlete Mindset community.

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What’s up?

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Super excited.

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So this is a part two, a two-part series installment.

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I interviewed Dr.

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Kwaku Amoasi back in October of 2024.

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And I guess I can’t go another year without talking to him.

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So here we are, another interview with him.

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Let me give him his proper flowers and introduction before we start to dive in.

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Dr.

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Kwaku Amoasi is a licensed psychologist and certified mental performance consultant.

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He is a published author, keynote speaker, and radio host.

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He currently serves as a psychological service provider for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and is the Chief Wellness Officer for Blacksmith Consulting.

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In addition, he has served as a psychologist in hospitals, prisons, and secondary and post-secondary school milieus.

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And over the past 11 years, he has worked with Cyber Athletics and Nike Elite Youth Basketball, Full Circle Confidential, and teams in the NFL, NBA, and NCAA.

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How’s it going, my brother?

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This is our achievement week with the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

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So I’m feeling strong.

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I’m feeling good.

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Achievement week.

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Yes, bros.

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Years in our fraternity.

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So I got my colors on for those who can’t see.

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You know, I feel good.

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It’s like, and this is the thing.

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When you’re in good community and you’re doing positive things, it just strengthens you in so many different ways.

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We talk about

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people doing things to self-medicate.

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This is one of those self-medications that’s good, being around love, support, generosity, and then being able to give, to be able to help others.

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I just feel really strong, feel really good.

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And then I’m in good company with you, so it makes me smile even more.

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Yes, same.

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We’ve had to hit a couple points of adversity leading up to this point, but we are here.

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And just because we

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recorded our last episode a year ago, that don’t mean that we don’t be texting and calling and commenting and all this stuff.

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we have to stay connected.

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That’s a priority for me as a human, as an awesome person in this field and as a broad, like Delta Sigma Theta, Omega Psi Phi, let’s go.

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And so let us bring all the energies from all our communities into this talk.

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I know we will.

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So let’s start it off.

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You ready?

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So suicide prevention and mental health crises among athletes continue to be a critical concern, as you and I have talked about, and we know.

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We have recently heard in the news of Marshawn Neland dying by suicide.

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The concern is not just with pro athletes or NFL players, but from your perspective, what are some of the underlying factors that make athletes particularly vulnerable, and how can sports psychologists and those of us in the profession support systems better respond?

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I think it’s a lot of ways you can answer this, but if we go back to kind of wishful things, what we need to start doing now, we have to start to talk to our youth.

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We got to talk to the coaches, we got to talk to the youth, the parents, and make this something that’s what we remove the stigma to be able to talk about.

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We bring in the psychology part from the performance so they understand, hey, how can I optimize my performance?

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But then also the psychology from the clinical side, like, hey, if I’m not doing good outside of the field, how do I address these?

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feelings.

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And to get to your original questions, most of them can’t answer because they never had somebody tell them that.

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So the thought of as a superhero, you know, you’re superhuman when you’re an athlete.

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You can do things that no more mortal can do.

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You’re jumping higher, you’re running faster, you’re doing all of the things that make people marvel.

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And so you said, why would I want to attach anything that can bring down

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that era of invincibility, that era of strength.

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So the first thing is we build them up so they can’t even be human.

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They can’t be real with their emotions.

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They can’t talk.

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They can’t say these things.

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So many suffer in silence.

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And then when you put in there, and this is what both male and

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and females, it’s such a masculine, negative type of energy of this.

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I got it.

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I don’t need any help.

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I’m rough.

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I’m rugged.

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I got this.

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I’m a dog.

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I’m this.

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I’m that.

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And what happens is that creates a culture where I can’t talk to people about I’m hurty because I’m A superhero.

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How can I be hurt?

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So first we have this superhero kind of trait.

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But then the second thing is,

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When somebody says it, guess what?

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Now our society has gotten a little better where we’ll applaud the people.

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Oh, I’m so glad such and such said this.

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I’m so glad such and such said this in front of everybody.

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But behind closed doors, what’s the one axiom that every coach says?

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The best ability

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is availability.

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I don’t care if you’re not available because of your hamstring or ankle or if it’s because of your brain, whatever it might be that can cause you not to be irregular with consistency, now it puts something on you.

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I have to select positions.

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This person suffers from mental illness.

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This person doesn’t.

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That’s the edge I need.

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So why am I going to say anything that can potentially jeopardize how I’m looked at by my coaches or by my teammates?

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My teammates, I want them to see me as strong.

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I want them to see me as this person who has it all.

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You come to me for the answers.

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And this is the irony of it, Lisa.

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When we talk about people, and I’m not just putting meds out there like that, but we understand what psychotropics can do in certain situations.

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I said, medications, specifically psychotropic medications that’s prescribed by a psychiatrist,

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It can be abused.

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And that’s why most people, especially in marginalized communities, are afraid of it because they’ve seen us abused by it, misused by it.

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But when done properly, it can be extremely beneficial.

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But when you tell a person about taking medication, it’s not taking no meds.

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Ain’t nothing wrong with me.

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But this is the same person who will get up, smoke 4 blunts, will go get 2 packs of gummies, will go get this, go drink this alcohol, go get this.

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We’ll self-medicate.

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And now when you’re self-medicating, what is that?

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Even though people understand that to be a problem, it doesn’t bring the same stigma as taking what a psychotropic.

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So I’d rather be known as the weed head.

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I’d rather be known as the cry kid.

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I’d rather be known as the alcoholic than a person who takes medication because of the stigma that comes.

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So when we start talking about, I can’t even use some of the things that come attached that might be able to help me because it’s there.

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And then the main thing, and this is the hardest one,

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We don’t want to admit it to ourselves.

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In our profession, think about how many of us, we don’t do true self-care.

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I got this.

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I can get this.

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I’m strong enough.

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I can handle this.

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And that’s what makes you so successful because you’ve been built and you’ve been trained to say, you know what?

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I can overcome what most people can’t overcome.

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I can tackle the things that most people can’t tackle.

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I have confidence.

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I’m going to will myself out of this.

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I’m going to make sure that this is not the end of me like that.

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And then it becomes overwhelming.

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But just like the weight room and we need a spot

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Sometimes we got to recognize in life we need a mental spotter.

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We need an emotional spotter.

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Some weights are too heavy to lift.

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And if we understand that going into the gym, we have to make sure that’s known in our personal lives.

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But so many people go to life unhappy.

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unlike the gym without a spotter and you have negative consequences.

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And I say this from a true life story.

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I had a friend, he wanted to get strong.

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He was getting stronger and stronger.

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And he got to the point where he started to lift really heavy weights.

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Where the weight got too heavy for him, he didn’t have a spotter fell, tore his neck up and he died.

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Broke his neck.

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my gosh.

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Of what he was doing.

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So when you can think of it like that with weights, I tell people to have that same look emotionally.

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The problem is weights are visible.

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We can see it, we can feel it.

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But when we start to deal with emotional and mental issues, those things are invisible and we can’t feel it the same.

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We don’t see it the same.

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So we don’t respect it the same, but it can have the same deadly consequences.

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Your

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sort of connection to mental and physical helps people understand it.

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That’s really, really important.

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And the sort of the stigma, the weakness that goes along with male and female.

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It’s so well said and very, very much appreciated.

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What is one thing a parent and a coach can each do in their role for these youth athletes early on?

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to help break the stigma, to help normalize it.

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It’s okay to talk about mental weakness and that there’s a way to be mentally strong.

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Like just because you might have a diagnosis or a condition doesn’t mean you’re weak.

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You can be strong within the diagnosis too.

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I think it’s what you just said.

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You talk about it and it’s not taboo.

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It’s not something that’s swept under the rug.

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One of the things I love.

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what we do at the USOPC is everybody who comes in to work at the USOPC or is affiliated with an athlete or the athletes themselves have an ability to get trained in mental health first aid.

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And why I love Mental Health First Aid is because it gives us an idea on how we can become what I tell people what CPR is to the medical profession.

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Doesn’t make you a doctor to know CPR, but it helps you to be what a first responder.

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I can help and tell what the real helps get here.

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Mental Health First Aid is that same type of strategy.

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What it does is it lets us know

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What are some of the things we should be looking out for?

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What are the things we can say to let everybody know that this is normal, that this is a way of life, but what do we do to reduce the stigma?

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And not only do we reduce the stigma, we talk about what can we do for self-care.

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So we look at that mental health umbrella from mental wellness to mental illness, and we don’t have to talk about the mental illness that scares everybody.

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We can talk about the proactive mental wellness that people can buy into and say,

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What are the best measures for me to do it?

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So going into your thing, why don’t we talk about this once a day?

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Hey, how are you feeling?

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If you did feel suicidal, would you tell me?

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Who do you feel you could tell?

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Do you have a friend that you think you could tell?

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If a friend told you they were suicidal, who would you call?

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What would you do?

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Giving people those tools where if these situations come up, we know what to do.

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When people say, well, I don’t want to talk about it.

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I don’t want to even bring it into fruition.

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I said, look at our world.

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Look at our society.

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Our people are showing you they’re hurting by the way they’re hurting themselves.

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So we want to make sure that we do this what?

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Proactively.

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We want to make sure, even if it’s not a mental health first aid, what are the other strategies?

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Who are the Lisa Bontasummies we can bring in to be able to educate my team?

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Who are the Kinsley Gunners?

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Who are the Angel Brutuses?

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Who are the Aaron Goodsons?

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Who are the Kino Miller?

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Who are the people that’s inside of this society that we say they do this for a living?

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We can come in and because they come from working in areas in the pros and in the limbs

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and the NCAA spaces, these elite sports, they can relate to what it’s like to be if you want to get to that level and what’s the best practices to get there, not only from a performance standpoint, but a mental performance.

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So again, it goes into early intervention, early prevention, just being able to have those conversations that at one time were unspeakable conversations.

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And those conversations when you started your career were more unspeakable than now.

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There’s been an evolution and a growth within the field that you’ve been a part of and witnessed to, been learning from and given value to.

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How would you describe the evolution of sports psychology, our field, our industry, as you’ve been in this work for, gosh, 15 years and more?

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What, this is the thing, when I remember when I was hired full-time by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2014,

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People was like, what the heck are they doing?

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That was a few other teams who had a full-time psychologist.

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And one was the Dallas Mavericks.

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They had DK over there.

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And you know what was the funny thing?

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DK had a player by the name of Jason Kidd.

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Jason Kidd became the coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.

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He said, what I had in Dallas, I know how important this was.

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We need to have this here.

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And when I was there, it was in a consultant role.

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And he told me at this time, he said, we need you here full-time.

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Because you’re either in or you’re out.

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Because if you’re really going to be here, I need you to understand the pulse of the team was going on a daily basis.

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So with that being stated, there were some things that happened in the league that was like these kind of what they call unicorn cases that hadn’t happened before.

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But it just happened to happen to the Milwaukee Bucks where I was at.

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And it was like, what if they hadn’t had a psychologist there?

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And so through the years, that’s where you see the NBA mind health from the NBA, W, NBA, where now every team wasn’t, it wasn’t a suggestion.

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is mandated.

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You see that in the NFL now, you see that in other sport, that we have somebody embedded in a team who’s able to be what, a person who can talk to these players and not only talk to them, the leagues, the PA systems have outside entities to say, if you can’t talk within a team, we’re going to have these resources for you.

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So through the years, they’ve seen how this has been beneficial, how it’s been helpful, what works and what doesn’t work.

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So you see it grow and preferably it’ll continue to grow.

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We see it

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On the college sink, at one time there was nothing in colleges, then you would have one provider for the whole athletic system.

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Right.

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And you’re just like, this is not feasible, this is not sustainable.

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And now you see staffs that have six and seven people strong, and they thought at one time this was too much, but it was like, this is still not enough, but this is a lot better than what we had.

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And so when you started to see, oh, this is something that we need, and we talk about suicides, we see it so often.

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on the collegiate campuses.

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And we know this is a time of proliferation for a lot of the diagnosis that when the parents say, well, they didn’t have this when they were at home.

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But we know that what that 16 to 25 is a big time expansion.

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When we see those diagnosable things that come out of the DSM-5 that would not create some of those things from a bipolar, a heavy depression, even some of the psychosis, some of those things that could have suicidal options and tendencies and if the appropriate help there to diagnose it, to see it, to be able to treat it, to be able to help.

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It’s not going to work.

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And we know specifically within the sports program, a lot of those athletes aren’t going over to the traditional collegiate campus, to the counseling department.

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So you need a counseling department embedded within athletics where there’s a safety, a comfortability, and an understanding of exactly the need for these athletes with these specific needs.

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So when we see all of those things, there was a need, there was a devastating hurt,

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And then there was a response to it.

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The sad part is we always wait for something devastating to be able to grow, to be able to expand.

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So what we have to do is to look at to see the things that are not good and say, how can we be better, learn from these situations and continue to grow?

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So we’ve grown, but we still got more growing to do.

00:16:09 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Yes, thank you so much.

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I agree.

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Do you feel like…

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The sort of athletic training room is going to be an equivalent to a space that you speak of as embedded for the classroom.

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clinical and performance care of the athletes, that it’s going to be that normalized one day.

00:16:30 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Oh, it should be.

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Because if you remember, if you look at like we talked about the NBA, if you look at pitchers from the 1970, you had like 3 coaches and then like 12 players.

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Now you look at pitchers, it’s like it’s more staff than players because they need a weight trainer, they need a diet, nutrition.

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And they started to understand, hey, if we’re going to really give these athletes everything they need to be in optimal position, we’re going to have to grow.

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grow this.

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And then what happens is just like this, where you get one athletic training, you say, well, we actually need two, well, we actually need three.

00:17:02 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We need somebody at home on a roll.

00:17:03 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We need somebody who specializes in this.

00:17:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And that’s what you say.

00:17:08 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I think really psychology came from because the ATs were the de facto mental health people.

00:17:13 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And they said, what, we can work with this and we can help, but there’s some things that goes a little bit beyond our pay grade that we need help in.

00:17:20 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And so just as the athletic trainers and the strength and conditioning coaches became

00:17:25 Kweku Amoasi Smith

embedded and normalized, so will the performance and the psychologist because they’re going to show how they can be beneficial and helpful.

00:17:33 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Yes, thank you for that perspective.

00:17:35 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Staying with the collegiate landscape, we know that name, image, and likeness, NIL, has had a big impact on these young people making these big decisions.

00:17:49 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Like what psychological pressures or opportunities are you noticing for student athletes navigating this new reality?

00:17:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You know what, when I worked at the collegiate space, I worked at, it was a power five then, now they call it the power four, but in these power five spaces, it’s so much on these athletes.

00:18:05 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And I would tell my athletes when they come in, I said, listen, there’s gonna be three things open to you, but you can only do two well.

00:18:10 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And it was like, what are these two things?

00:18:12 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I said, well, you can play a sport, you can do your grades, or you can live the traditional social college life.

00:18:19 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I said, of those three things, you can only do too well.

00:18:23 Kweku Amoasi Smith

What are you going to decide?

00:18:25 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now, there’s always an anomaly who can do all three.

00:18:28 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But for the most part, people will say, I’m going to do grades.

00:18:32 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m going to do my sport.

00:18:33 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And when they do that great in sport, there’s a little social life that comes in there.

00:18:37 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But now we add NIL.

00:18:40 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now you got two or four things.

00:18:42 Kweku Amoasi Smith

NIL is so profitable.

00:18:45 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now you say, hey, I will be silly not to invest my time into this.

00:18:49 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So what takes away?

00:18:51 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Either your grades or either your actual performance.

00:18:54 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And there’s some people, NIL outlived their performance on the field because they were spending and investing so much time.

00:19:01 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now I’m a fan of NIL.

00:19:02 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Not only am I a fan of NIL, I’m a fan of pay to play.

00:19:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I think forever,

00:19:08 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Since 1985 in an Oklahoma lawsuit, when they started to get that television money contract, I said that was no longer an amateur sport.

00:19:17 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So when the coaches started getting big money, the players should have got that, but they kept them constrained under this student athlete.

00:19:25 Kweku Amoasi Smith

They’re amateurs.

00:19:26 Kweku Amoasi Smith

They don’t deserve to pay.

00:19:27 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But I said, when a university is profiting to that manner,

00:19:31 Kweku Amoasi Smith

These individuals not only need to get paid for their name, image, and likeness like they can in the NBA doing brands, but they also need to be paid by their team.

00:19:39 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now, the problem with that comes this, Lisa, we just talked about, oh, we want to grow these psych departments.

00:19:45 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Once we pay these athletes, guess what?

00:19:47 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It’s less and less money for staff.

00:19:49 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So now here comes the real thing.

00:19:52 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Where does this money go?

00:19:53 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How is it distributed?

00:19:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

What’s going to be cut?

00:19:57 Kweku Amoasi Smith

The landscape of the NCAA as we know it with revenue generating sports will not look the same in the next 10 years.

00:20:03 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It will be totally unrecognizable because of NIL.

00:20:07 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I think we’re going to see more club sports.

00:20:09 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I think we’re going to see other sports really become pure amateur in those revenue generating sports.

00:20:15 Kweku Amoasi Smith

sports are really going to be consequentially either minor pro teams or like a derivative of a protein because of the amount of money that they bring in.

00:20:22 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And you see it now because NCAA football, they’re really already detached from the NCAA, if we’re being honest, but they’re bringing in GMs.

00:20:30 Kweku Amoasi Smith

They’re bringing in all of the things that look like what?

00:20:33 Kweku Amoasi Smith

A National Football League team.

00:20:35 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And what does that cost?

00:20:36 Kweku Amoasi Smith

That costs money.

00:20:37 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And now because you can have the boosters do all of those different things, it’s a way that money can be shared

00:20:44 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It’s a way it can be distributed, but it’s going to be, it’s so new and it’s so unregulated, it’s going to take a while for us to really understand it.

00:20:51 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But this is what NIL has done to the game.

00:20:54 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It’s beautiful because the athletes are so worthy to be paid, so worthy to get what their name, image and likeness can bring.

00:21:01 Kweku Amoasi Smith

The only thing is it came out so new.

00:21:04 Kweku Amoasi Smith

people didn’t understand how to what integrate it into the system.

00:21:08 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So it became a wild, wild.

00:21:09 Kweku Amoasi Smith

They didn’t call it the wild, wild West.

00:21:10 Kweku Amoasi Smith

They call it the wild, wild West, East, North, and South, because it was a wild system.

00:21:15 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It was like, what do we do?

00:21:17 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We didn’t even know how to control it.

00:21:19 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You had agents who were taking advantage of some of the players to do.

00:21:22 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You had other schools who were trying to control their players through the NIL.

00:21:26 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And then you had other players who were taking off with the NIL and kind of losing track of the thing that got them the NIL in the 1st place.

00:21:33 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So

00:21:34 Kweku Amoasi Smith

AEL is a beautiful thing, but unregulated, it can be dangerous.

00:21:38 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So we have to figure out how do we get it so it can be confined within the schools, but that the athletes benefit the most from it.

00:21:45 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Yes, the regulation piece is important because there’s the psychological pressures that the team, the family, and the individual athlete each have to sort of cope with, manage.

00:21:58 Lisa Bonta Sumii

What would you say those psychological pressures are from an individual athlete perspective?

00:22:04 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So when we’re talking about a collegiate athlete, it’s a lot different because we know just from neuropsychology that the brain does not develop until you’re 25, 28.

00:22:14 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So we’re talking about what part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, this is our executive function.

00:22:18 Kweku Amoasi Smith

This is problem solving, delayed reaction.

00:22:21 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So now you’ve given all of this responsibility, all of this money to a person who’s still growing it to their adult cells.

00:22:27 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So now let’s say you take a

00:22:30 Kweku Amoasi Smith

a person who is not for means, and they get all of this money all of a sudden.

00:22:34 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Do they know how to distribute it?

00:22:35 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Do they understand the consequences from taxes?

00:22:38 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Do they understand how to invest it?

00:22:39 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Do they understand how not to give it away?

00:22:41 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Do they understand how not to get robbed and taken care of?

00:22:44 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now, you’re doing this while trying to learn an intricate play system, while learning at some academic institution and trying to be a college student.

00:22:52 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So you say, who’s there to teach them to do all of that?

00:22:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Nobody.

00:22:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But we’re seeing some of the things that’s going on.

00:22:58 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So what we want to be able to do

00:23:00 Kweku Amoasi Smith

to say, how can we help these young people?

00:23:02 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because we know we’re putting too much pressure.

00:23:04 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And then we say, well, why do we see the behaviors?

00:23:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because when you put them in this, now you see excessive drinking.

00:23:10 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now you see hyper-sexual behavior.

00:23:12 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now you see hyper-aggressive behavior, whether it’s fighting or interpersonal violence or domestic violence, things of that nature.

00:23:18 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We see the manifestation by the errors and the things that they do.

00:23:22 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And these are things that’s in the media and some of the things that’s swept under the rug that we never see that they’re protected from, but we know.

00:23:29 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Yes, we do.

00:23:31 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Yes, we do.

00:23:32 Lisa Bonta Sumii

I love that we are both duly trained.

00:23:36 Lisa Bonta Sumii

The CMPC and now psychology for you, clinical psychology and clinical social work for me.

00:23:43 Lisa Bonta Sumii

So when you told me that you spoke at one of my professional organizations as the keynote, I was like, what?

00:23:49 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And that professional organization was the Alliance for Social Workers in Sports.

00:23:54 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And my boy Kwaku was up in there dropping knowledge, I’m sure, but what an opportunity and what fun they all had listening to you, I’m so sure.

00:24:04 Lisa Bonta Sumii

I wasn’t able to make it.

00:24:05 Lisa Bonta Sumii

I have deep regret for it.

00:24:06 Lisa Bonta Sumii

But what themes or moments from that experience stand out to you the most, not just when you were given the keynote, but in your interactions with the other colleagues, professionals of that discipline?

00:24:17 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You know, you brought me back to my absolute beginnings.

00:24:20 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I started off as a school psychologist.

00:24:22 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So when I worked in the schools,

00:24:24 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I worked hand in hand with the social workers because we were team.

00:24:27 Kweku Amoasi Smith

When we talk about multidisciplinary teams, that was the essence of where I learned.

00:24:31 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I understand the synergy where everybody had similar roles, but we all had our own lanes, but how they came together to do what to help the student.

00:24:39 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So when I came to that conference, what I recognized was what a theme that the field is missing out on by not having the social workers fully integrated with the teams and the work that we do.

00:24:49 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I remember all of the specialness that the social workers bring because they’re so

00:24:54 Kweku Amoasi Smith

they’re so trained on such a diverse amount of different areas.

00:24:58 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Social workers, the thing with social workers are everywhere, which it is.

00:25:01 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Unfortunately, social workers get the bad thing.

00:25:03 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Like, these are the people who won’t come into your house and take your kids.

00:25:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You know?

00:25:07 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Right.

00:25:08 Kweku Amoasi Smith

One of my movies is Creed.

00:25:10 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And in the first scene, when he first come in, he was like, you know who you is.

00:25:14 Kweku Amoasi Smith

She said, do you know who I am?

00:25:15 Kweku Amoasi Smith

He said, you’re a social worker.

00:25:16 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Cause I’m in that field.

00:25:18 Kweku Amoasi Smith

He was up and going down the walls.

00:25:20 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It’s like, I don’t want it.

00:25:22 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And that’s what I think that social work

00:25:24 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But when you look at social workers in the hospital, you look at social workers in sports, you look at social work and education and business and all these places, the social workers were always those one, they were the extreme case managers bringing everything in together.

00:25:37 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So at that conference, what it taught me was,

00:25:41 Kweku Amoasi Smith

how intelligent like our social workers are.

00:25:43 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It’s like, I was just blown away from the research and study that they did, but this was specifically in the area of sports.

00:25:49 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So, you have an idea of the other stuff they do.

00:25:51 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But when I saw the research, the ******** research, I was so impressed.

00:25:57 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I learned A lot.

00:25:58 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And this one, I was like, I know this is a group that we have to interact more.

00:26:01 Kweku Amoasi Smith

This is a synergy that needs to come.

00:26:04 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And when I did my keynote, one of the things I was able to do is to say,

00:26:08 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I was able to listen to a lot of the different workshops, seminars, and listen.

00:26:12 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And I was able to pull all of those things together.

00:26:14 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But we just talked about what’s needed in the world of sports today.

00:26:17 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So we talked about ethics.

00:26:19 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We talked about NIL.

00:26:20 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We talked about gender parity within the sports.

00:26:24 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But we talked about something that we all had in common.

00:26:26 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And that was what we started this conversation with, a lack of self-care.

00:26:30 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How do we take care of ourselves?

00:26:32 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How do we take care of each other?

00:26:34 Kweku Amoasi Smith

What that balance, you know, you sometimes hear

00:26:37 Kweku Amoasi Smith

work-life balance.

00:26:38 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How do you get work-life harmony?

00:26:39 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How do you get this synergy?

00:26:41 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How do you do it all?

00:26:42 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because it almost seems impossible.

00:26:44 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But we talked about the little things that we have to do to be able to navigate that space.

00:26:49 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So in talking with a lot of the social workers there, I was able to meet so many different people.

00:26:54 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Dr.

00:26:54 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Leon Banks, Dr.

00:26:56 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Manny Bennett, Tiffany Taylor, and I could go on the names forever and whatnot.

00:27:02 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But like knowing Emmett Gill, knowing yourself before I came, meeting the Matt Moores

00:27:07 Kweku Amoasi Smith

of the world and the Natalie Graves, who I knew before we had talked, when I got to see all of these people, I said, this field is so strong, it’s so powerful.

00:27:15 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I said, once we get this into sports, that’s part of the problem with the NIF.

00:27:19 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How do we get the families together?

00:27:21 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because once a person turns 18, they’re emancipated.

00:27:24 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Right.

00:27:24 Kweku Amoasi Smith

From a HIPAA standpoint, how do we connect with the families?

00:27:27 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But we know with a simple release of information, bringing all the people in, again, in a proactive manner, what do we do before stuff gets hot?

00:27:35 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So while we’re recruiting, hey, that social worker should be on a visit.

00:27:39 Kweku Amoasi Smith

When I was at the University of Wisconsin, I would go on recruit visits or I would be there when the recruits came to the campus because they wanted the parents to see, this is a psychologist that we have on board.

00:27:48 Kweku Amoasi Smith

This is a person who works with our team.

00:27:50 Kweku Amoasi Smith

This is a person who’s going to be there for your son or for your daughter.

00:27:54 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And we bring the

00:27:54 Kweku Amoasi Smith

social workers.

00:27:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And now we say, how do we get all of the people that are important in this person’s spear and their circle to make this work together for them?

00:28:02 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because we always understand that troubles is going to come.

00:28:05 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How do we know troubles come?

00:28:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Look at the transfer portal.

00:28:08 Kweku Amoasi Smith

The transfer is telling us that people aren’t happy.

00:28:11 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And it’s not just about play.

00:28:12 Kweku Amoasi Smith

When we look, another thing we talked about the social worker conference was safe sports.

00:28:16 Kweku Amoasi Smith

How do we make sure

00:28:18 Kweku Amoasi Smith

that our athletes are safe, that our athletes are not being abused.

00:28:21 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And when we look at all of the things that go on from team hazing and go on from some of the coaching hazing or some of the coaching improprieties, when we look at the scandal at Ohio State with the wrestlers, when we look at Larry Nassar, when we look at Jerry Sandusky with Penn State and Michigan State, we see all of these things that can happen.

00:28:40 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So we talked about how do we keep our eyes out there and social workers and psychologists are acutely trained to be able to look

00:28:48 Kweku Amoasi Smith

look for those things that can be pathological or those things that don’t seem to click and make sense as mandatory reporters and say, hey, let’s gather the information that this is clean and good.

00:28:58 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Hey, now we know nobody has to be worried.

00:29:00 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But if there’s something that’s not right, we don’t have years and years and decades of abuse where we say, we should have known, we should have did something.

00:29:09 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We did that in the beginning.

00:29:10 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So that was the conglomerate of that conference.

00:29:12 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It was talking about how can we be a benefit to the people who we serve.

00:29:17 Lisa Bonta Sumii

No, I love it.

00:29:18 Lisa Bonta Sumii

I love, love, love it.

00:29:20 Lisa Bonta Sumii

The interconnection, the crossover, the collaboration.

00:29:25 Lisa Bonta Sumii

I think that it’s worth mentioning as clinical social worker who was a social worker before I even knew what that was professionally, the S, lowercase S, lowercase W, that there’s so many ways, even just in sport, that social workers can make impact.

00:29:41 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And it’s my opportunity

00:29:43 Lisa Bonta Sumii

could build on what you said and just name them.

00:29:45 Lisa Bonta Sumii

You said case management, being able to, within a team, make sure that if for some reason, like let’s say the Oakland Roots, the team I work for, if they need help with finding resources or culturally appropriate services, or where do I go to the market to find the food that I’m used to having?

00:30:02 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Where do I go to the doctor?

00:30:03 Lisa Bonta Sumii

How do I travel from here to there?

00:30:05 Lisa Bonta Sumii

That’s case management, taking care of the human being, right?

00:30:08 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Taking care of the family is another way that social workers come up in there and maybe provide

00:30:13 Lisa Bonta Sumii

family communication sessions or family bonding or connection or like, my family’s in the United States now that I am too, but they’re across the country.

00:30:24 Lisa Bonta Sumii

How do I connect with them as a support system and building that up, right?

00:30:28 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Education on what mental health is, a difference between mental health and mental performance, the signs and symptoms of someone who might be

00:30:35 Lisa Bonta Sumii

declining in their mental health and like that needs to be known to everyone working in the front office, providing this information for them, then the clinical part, that’s what you and I do.

00:30:46 Lisa Bonta Sumii

The clinical, the licensed clinical social worker, you do it from the clinical psychologist, but the clinician does the therapy, can treat, prevent, diagnose all the mental health conditions and keep someone healthy within a condition if there’s a diagnosis, because that’s important too, because the continuum across

00:31:04 Lisa Bonta Sumii

depression.

00:31:05 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Like you can be very high functioning, depressed person, still have it, maybe on medication, maybe not in regular therapy and do your thing, do your thing in life, do your thing on the field.

00:31:16 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Gosh, there’s advocacy, there’s policy development, there’s curriculum development, there’s crisis management, right?

00:31:25 Lisa Bonta Sumii

When it gets to that point, there’s mitigation of risk, safety.

00:31:29 Lisa Bonta Sumii

There’s so many things.

00:31:31 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And that’s just in the sport ecosystem.

00:31:33 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Can you imagine all the work that we do out there?

00:31:36 Lisa Bonta Sumii

But I think that is an important thing to name and that the Alliance for Social Workers of Sport was like the first professional organization I reached out to when I started working in sports.

00:31:46 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And I owe them a lot, the Dr.

00:31:48 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Stacy Kratz, the Dr.

00:31:50 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Stephanie Rosatos, those folks, yeah.

00:31:52 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And so just grateful that there’s this intersection, not just professionally, but like with someone I know so closely like yourself.

00:32:00 Lisa Bonta Sumii

is just really, really cool.

00:32:02 Lisa Bonta Sumii

It’s just so cool.

00:32:03 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And you were talking about, I’m a social worker too.

00:32:05 Lisa Bonta Sumii

I’ve been one.

00:32:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m gonna tell you, like, when I look at like some of the different schools, when I see what they’re doing at USC, when I see what they’re doing at the University of Kentucky, even at Tulane University, it’s like, it’s so many different schools that’s popping up.

00:32:18 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And I said, just like with the psychologists, they got the CMPC, which I know you have, I know there’s designations for the sports social workers to be able to make sure that they’re qualified for that special niche.

00:32:28 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And I love that they’re getting even more special

00:32:30 Kweku Amoasi Smith

specialize in it and all of the things that you need, that’s what it’s going to take.

00:32:34 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because we always say the athlete is their identity goes beyond the sport, but we only work in the sport.

00:32:40 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So if we really want to put some meat to that statement, what we have to do is say, we’re going to love the whole person.

00:32:46 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And that’s a word that I know sound weird coming from clinical people love.

00:32:52 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But I said, we can’t say we’re a family in this culture.

00:32:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We want to treat you like family.

00:32:57 Kweku Amoasi Smith

This is what we do.

00:32:58 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But then treat it as business as usual.

00:33:00 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I said, just be honest with who you’re gonna be.

00:33:02 Kweku Amoasi Smith

If you’re gonna be a business, it’s gonna be cut, bro.

00:33:04 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Say, hey, listen, we want the best of the best.

00:33:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We need people with no issues.

00:33:08 Kweku Amoasi Smith

If you got issues, we can’t deal with you.

00:33:09 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I know what I’m dealing with.

00:33:11 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Hey, once a badger, always a badger.

00:33:13 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Hey, this is the Michigan way.

00:33:15 Kweku Amoasi Smith

This is what we do here.

00:33:16 Kweku Amoasi Smith

This is our culture.

00:33:18 Kweku Amoasi Smith

We’re family.

00:33:19 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You see those words.

00:33:21 Kweku Amoasi Smith

you need to show it.

00:33:22 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You need to act like that.

00:33:23 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And what you’re saying is we have to bring people in who can bring in that whole eco spirit of athlete?

00:33:28 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Yes, the eco spirit.

00:33:30 Lisa Bonta Sumii

I love it.

00:33:30 Lisa Bonta Sumii

I love it.

00:33:31 Lisa Bonta Sumii

If there was someone, and I know what happens often, comes to you, is an up and coming professional in this field, and there’s two things you would give them for advice on how to go through their journey decisions and move through the process of either getting certified or licensed, what would you tell them?

00:33:50 Kweku Amoasi Smith

There’s two things, and it’s funny that you said two at the beginning.

00:33:53 Kweku Amoasi Smith

The first thing I tell them to do is like the kind of stereotypical answer.

00:33:58 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I say, hey, join *** the Association of Applied Sports Psychology.

00:34:02 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I said, join CSPA, the Clinical Counseling Sports Psychology Association.

00:34:07 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Join APA, the American Psychological Association, Division 47 for the Sport and Exercise Professional.

00:34:13 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And I said, and if you really want to do global, join ISSP, that’s the International Sports Psychology.

00:34:19 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And so when you start to deal with these

00:34:20 Kweku Amoasi Smith

organizations.

00:34:21 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You know what you do?

00:34:22 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You get to meet people.

00:34:23 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And that’s where the more people I know I met you at as Lisa.

00:34:27 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So because I went to that conference in Texas, I got a chance to meet you.

00:34:31 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And then you build relationships.

00:34:33 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And now I know something.

00:34:35 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Guess what?

00:34:36 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You know it.

00:34:36 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It’s just like being online.

00:34:38 Kweku Amoasi Smith

If I know something, my line brother, my line, I know it.

00:34:41 Kweku Amoasi Smith

It’s that type of energy.

00:34:43 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And so when we start talking about now you say, what’s the latest word going out?

00:34:46 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Not only can I read it, but I can talk to the different people.

00:34:50 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I can

00:34:50 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I can talk to Jim Durley or Emily Clark or Mike Clark about sleep studies if I want to.

00:34:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I can go talk to Alex Cohen or Jamie Shelton on mindfulness if I want to do these different things.

00:35:00 Kweku Amoasi Smith

If I want to see what’s going on in the NBA, WNBA, I can reach out to Kensa Gunter.

00:35:05 Kweku Amoasi Smith

If I want to know what’s going on in any of these areas, I can talk to these people because I see them.

00:35:10 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I can join the boards.

00:35:11 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I get to learn about policy.

00:35:14 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Now, how does this work?

00:35:15 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But then the second thing what I tell people is this, I say, get to a circle

00:35:19 Kweku Amoasi Smith

trusted people.

00:35:21 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because as well as I do in this field, because there’s some glamorous spots that’s there, people can lose their psychological social worker soul.

00:35:30 Kweku Amoasi Smith

That’s what we want to do on these teams, and you can be pushed to do some things that goes outside the ethical boundary.

00:35:38 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So I said, if you want to be solid, you want to be true to not only to sport, but just to the profession in a sense, get some people around you that’s a team that can help keep you in check.

00:35:47 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So whatever you do, you do it with integrity, you do it with a high level of ethicalness and a high level of efficiency for those people who you serve.

00:35:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because I tell people, if you can’t walk a tightrope without a safety net, this is not the feel for you.

00:36:02 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m working in the NBA, they told me to, they say, listen, you’re replaceable.

00:36:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I don’t care how smart you are, I don’t care how brilliant you are.

00:36:09 Kweku Amoasi Smith

There’s 15 other smart, brilliant people out there waiting for you, and you can be replaced overnight.

00:36:13 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And when you look at how the field is growing, you say, wow, these are so many different people.

00:36:17 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So when people get certain positions,

00:36:20 Kweku Amoasi Smith

might hold on to them and they might be, they might be tempted to do things that go outside the scope of what we do.

00:36:28 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So I tell people to be very careful to have a circle so you can understand that my soul, my ethics is intact.

00:36:35 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Because if I have a question and I don’t know if what I’m doing is above board, I have five people I can call.

00:36:40 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m going to call Lisa.

00:36:42 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m going to call Carolyn Davis.

00:36:44 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m going to call Chris Bader.

00:36:46 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m going to call, you know, I can think of names.

00:36:48 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m going to call Chris Card, who’s my

00:36:50 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m going to call people who I trust in this field, who’s been around alone.

00:36:55 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I’m going to call these people and say, what do you think about that?

00:36:58 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And they’d be like, you already know the answer because they don’t want to tell you, hey, what you’re doing is different.

00:37:04 Kweku Amoasi Smith

No, you say thank you.

00:37:06 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You’re setting up, but you need people who will be open and honest with you.

00:37:09 Kweku Amoasi Smith

But that goes to our first point.

00:37:11 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Being on those organizations, you learn all of the people.

00:37:13 Kweku Amoasi Smith

You learn who, you know, mixes with you, who has similar mindset, similar interests and specialties.

00:37:20 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And those are the people you gravitate to.

00:37:21 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And out of that, you get your set to make sure you stay true.

00:37:25 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And I’m not telling people to run away from the field.

00:37:27 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I want you to do it effectively, but efficiently, but most important, ethically.

00:37:32 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Yes.

00:37:33 Lisa Bonta Sumii

For sure.

00:37:33 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Those are such great points.

00:37:35 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And I will end today by sharing a conversation I have with Dr.

00:37:39 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Angel Brutus over brunch around the fact that when you work with, what was the word she used, sort of like folks who have a lot of visibility, athletes who have a lot of visibility, it’s a parallel process for those who are connected to them around the team or their success.

00:38:01 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And so there’s an extra layer for us with our ethics, our laws, our confidentiality that we have to be very, very supported and cared for to make those decisions because they’re also managing decisions and we have to help them manage those decisions.

00:38:15 Lisa Bonta Sumii

So it’s a parallel process in the support that is needed for both the athlete and the caregiver like ourselves.

00:38:21 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And that is so key that we should probably have two or three times the support that each

00:38:27 Lisa Bonta Sumii

athlete or team has to be able to have that extra layer of protection and risk management around these important decisions, like you’re talking about, my mental health, about my NIL, about my family relationships, about all these decisions, my schoolwork, my intimate partner, my, there’s so many decisions with that brain that’s not developed that you have to lean on other people’s brains that you trust.

00:38:50 Lisa Bonta Sumii

So

00:38:51 Lisa Bonta Sumii

The athlete needs that.

00:38:52 Lisa Bonta Sumii

We need that.

00:38:53 Lisa Bonta Sumii

The coach for that matter, the families, the parents, right?

00:38:56 Lisa Bonta Sumii

That’s a pillar of mental health to have a strong support system.

00:38:59 Lisa Bonta Sumii

So I really appreciate you building that up and talking about it from a professional standpoint and also a personal standpoint.

00:39:05 Lisa Bonta Sumii

So I appreciate you all that you are, your expertise, your humanity, your spirit, everything you add to this world on a professional and personal tip.

00:39:16 Lisa Bonta Sumii

And I just, I appreciate sharing space and talking with you as always.

00:39:21 Kweku Amoasi Smith

Same is here this way, Queen.

00:39:22 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I appreciate what you do.

00:39:24 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I love, as Marie said, I don’t know if you can see my book.

00:39:27 Kweku Amoasi Smith

I got it right here.

00:39:28 Kweku Amoasi Smith

That’s one of my things on my shelf.

00:39:30 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And so it’s not just talking about what we do, the things that we come.

00:39:35 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So I respect what you do, what you put out, because it not only helps me, but helps the people who we serve.

00:39:40 Kweku Amoasi Smith

And so it’s always a pleasure to be in company with someone who’s not just like on the cutting edge, but it’s the person who’s helping to create what happens next for the next generation.

00:39:50 Kweku Amoasi Smith

So kudos to.

00:39:52 Lisa Bonta Sumii

Thank you so much.