Jessica Malcolm, Philip Sullivan
Promoting mental health in elite athletic environments has become a priority. Recent research supports the promotion of mental health assets - individual-level resources that maximize the ability of individuals to attain and maintain mental health and wellbeing - as an underutilized approach to improving mental health in sport. The current study investigated the mental health assets of social support, resiliency, and mental health resource literacy among Canadian university students in relation to their gender and sports participation. Using data from the 2023 deployment of the Canadian Campus Wellbeing Survey (CCWS), we found that student-athletes (n = 1,143) reported significantly higher levels of all three mental health assets than non-athletes (n = 24,365); and that these differences were greater for men than women for resiliency and mental health literacy. These results add to the somewhat inconsistent literature regarding the mental health of intercollegiate athletes relative to their non-athlete peers. Furthermore, they support nuanced mental asset strategies for student-athletes.