The following article comes from the Aspen Institute’s State of Play Baton Rouge report. The report assesses the opportunities and barriers for more children to access sports and physical activity in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana.

The 2023 suicide by Owen Tabor, a 15-year-old high school football player in Baton Rouge, opened eyes in the sports community about the silent epidemic of suicide. In Louisiana, suicide is the third-leading cause of death for young people ages 10-24. Our Baton Rouge youth survey found that 20% felt depressed or hopeless at least half of the days in the previous two weeks.

Certainly, these challenges are not confined to Baton Rouge. National research shows young Americans have increasing levels of anxiety about their own lives and are depressed about the future of the country. From 2003 to 2022, American teenagers reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 45%, or more than three hours per week, according to The Atlantic. There is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history when people spent more time on their own.

Increased teen depression coincides with the proliferation of smartphones and social media — so much so that U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels on social media platforms because they can harm teenagers’ mental health. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest longitudinal study on happiness and well-being ever conducted, concluded that relationships are the key to happiness and that humans should care for their social fitness like they care for their physical fitness.

At their core, sports should help children’s mental health. But it’s all in the delivery of the programs. Sports can be good experiences, or they can be bad experiences. If sports are not youth-centered experiences, they can damage a child’s mental health.

Research shows that adults who continuously played organized sports through their childhood have fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression than those who never played or dropped out, but those who quit sports had poorer mental health than those who never played at all. Most children don’t stick with sports for various reasons.

We heard positive and negative sports experiences from Baton Rouge youth. Many talked about the joy and freedom they feel when they play, describing how sports are an escape from problems in life. In addition, too many young people told us they feel anxious and pressured by adults in sports. In one focus group with a dozen teenage club soccer players, two-thirds said they receive unnecessary pressure from their parents.

Solutions

Train coaches, rec leaders, athletes and parents to promote mental health

Owen Tabor’s parents launched the Rain Will Bring Flowers Foundation and partnered with LSU, Joe Burrow Foundation, Our Lady of the Lake and Raising Cane’s for a free mental health event that packed LSU’s basketball arena. In 2024, the Rain Will Bring Flowers Foundation and American Foundation for SuicidePrevention began attempting to train every school system across Louisiana in suicide prevention, including coaches.

“Coaches spend so much time with our kids and our kids look up to them,” said Jordan Tabor, Owen’s father. “They’re in a great position to pick up on warning signs and get a struggling kid the help they need. We’re training them to say, ‘Listen, trust your gut, be in the moment with the child, and don’t try to fix the child. Listen and empathize.’”

As of November 2024, the Tabors’ foundation had helped train or scheduled trainings that cover 60,500 students, faculty, coaches and parents across 18 parishes in Louisiana. Jay Johnson, LSU’s national championship baseball coach, recorded a PSA about mental health that was distributed across the Louisiana High School Athletic Association’s network of 13,000 coaches.

“I truly believe we need to figure out a way to leverage premier athletes and coaches with ties to Louisiana to share this message,” Tabor said. “Before I lost my son, if I was invited to attend an event on mental health or suicide, it fell on deaf ears. I thought no way that will happen to us. Now, I wish I would have had more training and education. Maybe our son would still be with us.”

Pass state law requiring mental health training for coaches

Louisiana could build on templates from Ohio and Maryland, which require that public high school coaches are trained to recognize mental illness and behavioral distress in students. That includes recognizing signs of depression, trauma, violence, youth suicide and substance abuse. Maryland went a step further and requires all public colleges to also provide this training to coaches.

In Ohio, the State Board of Education recommends coaches take the training through Coaches’ Tool Chest, which offers multiple certifications and partners with Cincinnati Children’s, the Ohio High School Athletic Association, and the Ohio Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association. Ten training options are available for coaches to choose from. Most are virtual and some are in-person.

Louisiana state law may go the opposite direction. In 2024, a state legislator proposed a bill that would repeal required teacher training in many areas, including suicide prevention. The bill would authorize the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to promote rules requiring the inclusion of topics that it deems important for teacher training. “Repealing all legislation related to student mental health and teacher training in suicide prevention would amount to an abdication of the legislature’s duty of oversight,” Tabor said.

In a 2022 national survey of coaches, the Aspen Institute and Ohio State found that only 18% of youth coaches feel highly confident in their ability to link athletes to mental health resources. But 67% of the coaches want more education on the subject, so there is a receptive audience waiting to be educated.

Develop ParkRx program to prescribe park visits and outdoor activities

In a BREC survey of Baton Rouge residents, 83% agreed or strongly agreed that BREC facilities improve mental health and reduce stress. Nearly one-third of respondents identified this attribute as one of the three most important benefits of BREC. In 2024, BREC’s 10-year strategic plan recommended exploring a ParkRx program with local health care agencies and insurance companies.

ParkRx is a national nonprofit organization aiming to decrease chronic diseases by encouraging health care providers to prescribe nature time as part of routine health care visits. Utah and Tennessee have state ParkRx programs that started at the park district or county level and grew over time through state, private and grant funds. Tennessee’s program uses a mobile app for state residents to track outdoor activities and earn awards, including gifts from Nike, which helps to underwrite the program.

Metro Parks Tacoma in Washington has also explored ParkRx pilot programs and whether children could receive prescriptions for play. One challenge identified in Tacoma is that reimbursement for park prescriptions is not supported by the current insurance system, since there are no billing codes or other payment models. Insurance providers won’t reimburse unless the Washington State Legislature requires them.

Adopt strategies associated with the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports

Developed by Project Play through a working group of human rights and sports policy experts, the Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports recognizes that every child has the right to play sports and have their human rightsrespected by adults. The Children’s Bill of Rights in Sports identifies eight rights:

To play sports: Providers should develop policies, practices and partnerships to include youth from underrepresented populations and create programs that both meet and stimulate youth interest in sports.
To safe and healthy environments: Children should play in settings free from all forms of abuse (physical, emotional, sexual), hazing, violence and neglect.
To qualified program leaders: Children should play under the care of coaches and other adults who pass background checks. Coaches should be trained in general concepts in coaching youth, sport-specific coaching, the emotional needs of children, injury prevention, CPR and first aid, and abuse prevention.
To developmentally appropriate play: Children should play at a level commensurate with their physical, mental and emotional maturity and their emerging athletic ability. Roster sizes, rules and equipment should be adapted to those levels.
To share in the planning and delivery of their activities: Children should be able to share their viewpoints with coaches and program administrators, and their insights should be incorporated into activities.
To an equal opportunity for personal growth: Programs should invest equally in children, free of discrimination based on any personal or family characteristic. Policies on minimum playing time in games should be established in recognition of the evolving capacities of youth, with a bias toward roughly equal playing time over the course of a season.
To be treated with dignity: Children have the right to make mistakes and fail without fear. Policies should be established and enforced to prevent bullying behavior by coaches, parents, spectators and teammates.
To enjoy themselves: Children have the right to participate in activities they consider fun and which foster the development of friendships, the prime motivation for many to participate.

Mayors in Houston, Baltimore, Kansas City, Boston and other cities have endorsed this bill of rights, recognizing its value in creating a shared understanding about the conditions under which children should be engaged through sport programs. The mayor and/or Metropolitan Council in Baton Rouge could join them, and the parks and recreation department, as well as local sport providers, can assess their alignment through a free, editable template on Project Play’s website.

Jon Solomon is Community Impact Director of the Aspen Institute’s Project Play initiative. Jon can be reached at jon.solomon@aspeninstitute.org.