Contributions of Psychological Skills and Mindfulness to NCAA Student-Athlete Well-Being

Participation in elite level sport requires being subjected to considerably stressful training and competition environments. Psychological skills and mindfulness have been demonstrated to enhance performance in sport, but less is known regarding how they impact an athlete's well-being in their sport and in their life. Greater knowledge of this relationship would aid practitioners in developing holistic, more psychologically well-adjusted student-athletes. To meet this end, 222 current NCAA Division I fall and winter sport athletes representing six different sports completed the Mental Health Continuum –Short Form (Keyes et al., 2008), Sport Mental Health Continuum –Short Form (Foster & Chow, 2016), Ottawa Mental Skills Assessment Tool-3 (Durand-Bush et al., 2001), Mindfulness Inventory for Sport (Thienot et al., 2014), and the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (Brewer et al., 1993). Path analysis indicated that both psychological skills and mindfulness had significant moderate direct effects on sport well-being; however, only mindfulness was shown to have a significant moderate direct effect on global well-being. Correlational data indicated foundational skills and somatic skills, specifically self-confidence, relaxation, and activation, to be the most salient psychological skills for sport well-being and global-well. Nonjudgmental acceptance was the most salient mindfulness skill, as it had a moderate causal path to sport well-being and a strong causal path to global well-being. The practical implications of the findings include evidence for the importance of developing these skills in college athletes to enhance their sport well-being and global well-being.