The second session of the Olympic Forum – Romà Cuyàs Memorial addressed sport and mental health from the perspective of entities and organisations.
Eduard Inglés, director of the INEFC, the venue that hosted this second session, and Francesc Terrón, director of the Barcelona Olympic Foundation, the entity organising the Olympic Forum, were in charge of welcoming the participants.
With the help and support of the Blanca Foundation, we were able to enjoy the screening of the documentary El viaje. La medalla de la salud mental, which tells the story of skier Blanca Fernández Ochoa. The video can be seen in the RTVE link: El Viaje. La medalla de la salud mental.
After the documentary, Paula Fernández Ochoa, consultant and speaker in high competition environments, contextualised the needs of people, especially athletes, when facing certain problems related to mental health.
The journalist Mireia Vicente moderated a round table with Raúl Chapado, president of the RFEA; May Peus, president of the RFEDI; Isabel Pérez, general secretary of the UFEC, and Lucía Jiménez, coordinator of the Bepro Foundation’s sports care programme. During the debate, the participants discussed the need to detect these mental health-related problems before they become uncontrollable, and to this end there are programmes to help and provide advice to sportsmen and women. However, in many cases, the lack of resources and the scale of this need lead the organisations to stress that although we are running late, work is being done conscientiously to tackle the problem.
Finally, Susana Regüela, head of the Sports Career Support Unit at CAR Josep Lluís Vilaseca, explained the range of needs identified in an athlete’s career during their time at the CAR. The High-Performance Sports Centre takes in athletes from 12 to 30 years of age and their needs are different at each stage of their personal and sporting growth. The “transition” periods are the stages in which the psychological accompaniment of the athletes is most intensified.
The last session of the 15th edition of the Olympic Forum – Romà Cuyàs Memorial: Sport and Mental Health focused on team management.
To address this topic, we had the collaboration of journalist Jordi Fandiño, who moderated the panel comprising Eusebio Unzué, general manager of Movistar Team; the athlete Alex Roca, ambassador of the FC Barcelona Foundation; Mar Rovira, head of the Mental Performance department of RCD Espanyol de Barcelona and Gerard Raventós, basketball players’ representative at YouFirst. The speakers described the most common situations linked to the mental health of their team, which they encounter every day while carrying out their work.
Next, Jordi Soler, General Manager of the Professional Video Game League, gave us some of the nuances of mental health in professional video game teams and highlighted the tools that the League provides these teams with.
Finally, we enjoyed the presentation “Sports performance: mental and emotional factors” by Xesco Espar, high performance expert with extensive experience in top-level competition. Thanks to his long career as a coach, Xesco is currently committed to helping both sports and professional teams to improve their performance by identifying needs and/or problems related to mental “hygiene”, such as dealing with stressful situations or relieving tension in work teams.
The Olympic Forum was closed by David Escudé, President of the Barcelona Olympic Foundation and Barcelona City Councillor for Sports, who thanked all the organisations, media and individuals for their collaboration in this 15th edition of the Olympic Forum – Romà Cuyàs Memorial.
Remember that all the information about the Olympic Forum can be found at: General Information of the Olympic Forum
If you would like to see the videos, they are available on our YouTube channel:
The 1st session: Sportspeople and Mental Health of the 15th edition of the Olympic Forum – Romà Cuyàs Memorial: Sport and Mental Health is available on YouTube Channel: Fundació Barcelona Olímpica – Museu Olímpic BCN – Athletes and Mental Health
The 2nd session: Organisations and Mental Health of the 15th edition of the Olympic Forum – Romà Cuyàs Memorial: Sport and Mental Health is available on the YouTube Channel: Fundació Barcelona Olímpica – Museu Olímpic BCN – Organisations and Mental Health
The 3rd session: Teams and Mental Health of the 15th edition of the Olympic Forum – Romà Cuyàs Memorial: Sport and Mental Health is available on the YouTube Channel:
Fundació Barcelona Olímpica – Museu Olímpic BCN – Teams and Mental Health
