Stop Treating Sport as ‘Extra.’ It’s One of Our Best Mental Health Tools.

By Megan Bartlett, Founder, Center for Healing and Justice through Sport

World Mental Health Day. One day a year we pause to acknowledge what we already know: young people are struggling, resources are stretched thin, and everyone’s looking for solutions.

But here’s the thing – millions of kids are already showing up to a mental health solution three times a week. We just don’t recognize it as one.

Sport.

It’s time we stop separating sport from mental health. Sport is mental health infrastructure – and we’re vastly underutilizing it.

Sport and Mental Health: The Evidence We Can’t Ignore

We know instinctively that movement makes us feel better. But promising research goes deeper: organized sport, especially team sport, can have protective effects on young people’s mental health.

  • A national study of more than 11,000 kids (ages 9–13) found that those who played team sports had fewer mental health difficulties than peers who played no sports at all.
  • Other research shows that young people who stay engaged in sport through adolescence report lower levels of anxiety and depression in adulthood.
  • Girls who play sports not only report lower depression and anxiety but also describe stronger connections, more confidence, and better coping skills.

But here’s what the research doesn’t always explain: why.  Why does dribbling a basketball help a young person manage stressful situations? Why does swimming laps calm an anxious mind? Why does being part of a team make hard things feel more manageable?

The answers can be found in the biology of the human being – specifically, how the brain develops, heals, and processes stress.

Your Brain Doesn’t Work Top-Down. Neither Should Mental Health.

Here’s what most people don’t know about their brains: they are continually sensing and processing information from the world and from inside the body. This information comes into the bottom parts of our brain and is sorted – and acted on, if needed – from the bottom up. The lower parts of our brain are organized to sense, sort, and act to keep us safe. The middle and top parts handle more complex functions like feeling, connecting, reflecting and planning. 

When young people experience chronic or overwhelming stress or trauma, their brains can get stalled out in the lower parts; the result is persistent survival behavior – more freeze, flight and fight.

Imagine standing in the middle of the freeway trying to dodge cars. You can’t do calculus when you’re dodging cars. You can’t regulate emotions, build relationships or make rational decisions when your brain says ‘you are not welcome here’ or ‘you are under threat. ‘ 

So what do most interventions do? They try to reason with dysregulated kids. They give them worksheets. They tell them to “think through it.” They ask kids to access their complex thinking brain – which is ‘off-line’ when all their energy is being pulled into the safety and survival brain.

This is where sport comes in.

Sport works because it gives the body – and the stressed brain – what it needs. It doesn’t start with thinking – it starts with movement. With rhythm. With connection.  

Sport provides: 

  • Patterned, repetitive, rhythmic movement (running, swimming, dribbling) regulates the nervous system, bringing elevated stress levels back to baseline
  • Safe, consistent relationships with coaches and teammates build trust- the biological antidote to stress. When an athlete feels connected, their brain helps them register safety.
  • Manageable challenges (the right amount and patterns of stress) build resilience. The process of learning, over time, to make a free throw under pressure teaches the brain it can handle hard things. This is where performance happens – but only after regulation and relationship.

This isn’t just theory. It’s based on the Neurosequential Model, a framework developed by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD that helps practitioners across many systems – like, therapeutics, education, criminal justice, and foster care – understand what young people’s brains need. At CHJS, we’ve been fortunate to collaborate with the Neurosequential Network to bring an understanding of how the brain develops, heals, and thrives into the sport world to create tactical strategies, practices, drills and team culture (NM-Sport). We’re taking what we know about healing and resilience and putting it in the hands of the adults kids see every day – their coaches.

The Risk of Doing Nothing

Sport isn’t automatically healing. It can hurt as much as it helps when it’s built on fear and exclusion. We’ve all seen that side: the burnout, the shame, the toxic locker rooms, the pressure to be perfect.  

But when sport is designed with the brain in mind – when we train coaches to understand regulation, relationships and resilience – it becomes one of the most powerful everyday mental health tools we have. And unlike most mental health interventions, sport is already embedded in communities. Kids are already showing up. Coaches are already there. We just need to equip them differently. 

What Needs to Happen

World Mental Health Day is one day. This work is every day. Here’s what that looks like:

  1. Train Coaches. And train them the right way. Coaches don’t need degrees in psychology, but they do need to understand how brains work and how to create environments where young people feel safe enough to engage.
  2. Activate parents. Parents are stakeholders, not spectators. But they can’t advocate for healing-centered sport if they don’t know what it looks like. Equip them with the language and tools to recognize brain-based coaching and demand it when it’s missing. When parents understand what healing-centered sport looks like, they become powerful advocates for change.
  3. Invest in equity. Too often, the best resources go to kids who already have access. Healing-centered sport has to reach the kids and communities who need it most. 
  4. Put sport at the table. When schools, cities, and health systems talk about mental health solutions, sport should be part of the plan – not an afterthought. Policymakers need to recognize that sport isn’t recreation – it’s preventive mental health infrastructure already embedded in every community. If we’re serious about solving the youth mental health crisis, sport needs funding, attention, and integration into our broader wellness strategies.

If we want young people to be brave instead of perfect, to take risks instead of shutting down, to build resilience instead of just surviving – we have to meet them where they are developmentally.

Sport meets the body – including the brain – where it is.  It always has.

We just need to stop treating sport as ‘extra’ and start recognizing sport for what it is: essential mental health support already embedded in our communities.

Because nothing heals like sport.

-Megan Bartlett

PS. A heartfelt thank you to Bruce D. Perry, MD PhD for helping us keep the science grounded and true. Anything that’s right reflects his guidance; anything that’s not, that’s on me.

Want to learn more about CHJS?

Ready to bring this to your organization? CHJS offers training, consultation, and resources designed specifically for the realities of youth sport. Let’s talk about what healing-centered sport could look like in your community. Email us at team@chjs.org