- The partnership will offer psychological support for athletes
- The Olympic Games will be staged in Paris
- Qualification ends in June
The National Olympics Committee of Kenya (NOCK) has launched a mental health campaign for athletes, as the countdown towards the Paris Games draws closer. The campaign, dubbed Tufunguke Wanaspoti has been launched in partnership with the Chiromo Hospital Group.
This is part of NOCK’s expansive program towards athlete welfare to ensure peak performance when they line up for their various disciplines in Paris in the summer.
NOC-K signed a long-term partnership with Chiromo Hospital Group in 2022 through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that has seen the Level 5 specialized mental health hospital extend its services to Kenyan athletes.
The collaborative agreement between NOC-K and CHG is in the provision of promotive, preventive, and curative mental health services to Kenyan sportsmen and women.
Through this program, sportspersons and athlete’s entourage have been trained on how to identify, control, and manage mental health-related matters; build awareness by way of structured mental health talks and digitized self-mental health wellness assessments.
Addressing mental health towards Olympics
In the current world, mental health and emotional well being have been picked out as very key aspects in peak athlete performance, and NOCK says the partnership with Chiromo will go a long way in addressing this.
One critical support in this partnership is psychosocial support, especially as it is crunch time for athletes as they try to land qualification for the quadrennial games.
“The athletes need psycho-social support now more than ever; the pressure of performance at the highest level, being dropped from a team, missing qualification-Kenya will send only about 100 athletes out of the thousands who participate. Internationally, only 10,500 athletes will be at the Olympics, of the millions who participate. All these are on top of the normal occurrences of life. Athletes are first human beings before they are athletes,” NOCK Secretary General Francis Mutuku said during the launch of the partnership.
NOCK Secretary General Francis Mutuku
He adds; “Athletes are the center of our operations, and this is why we have the champion, Humphrey Kayange, together with the Athletes Commission, are full-time looking after the welfare of athletes beyond performance.”
The campaign has been launched at a key time, during the mental health month.
“We must walk with the athletes who are selected to represent the flag in the Paris Olympics, the athletes who have fallen off from these 100 athletes, CHG will walk with you. Chiromo has given a toll-free number where the athletes can call to get the necessary support,” Chiromo Hospital Group CEO, Dr. Vincent Hongo said as he addressed athletes present during the launch.
Support crucial for athletes
Athlete representative Humphrey Kayange believes the support will be crucial for the team heading to Paris for the Olympics, as well as those who will not be successful to earn qualification.
“During our time, we rarely got support like this and this is something which I believe is very crucial for every sports person. If you look at all the elite teams in the world, there is always a psychologist on call because they believe in mental wellness being an integral part of good performance,” Kayange, a former Kenya Sevens international said.
He adds; “It is important to give these athletes psycho-social performance before, during and after the Games and this is something really crucial that we cannot afford to overlook.
Present during the launch was 400m national champion Zablon Ekwam, who has also earned qualification to the Olympics . Ekwam believes that supporting athletes psychologically will help them perform at their best.
“As sportsmen, we are also human beings and we go through a lot of things, on and off the field. We need skills to deal with these issues and to strike a balance with our professional lives. I want to thank NOCK and Chiromo for this program and I know it will go a long way in helping us do well in Paris,” Ekwam stated.
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