Indian parents’ unrealistic expectations main reason for mental health issues in athletes: Gopichand

Elite badminton coach Pullela Gopichand said Indian parents' lack of understanding and unrealistic expectations were the main reasons for concerns over mental health among young athletes.

The Dronacharya awardee made his bold remark in an interaction with Revsportz. Gopichand said the best way to tackle this issue was to accept failures as a part of the sport and not treat the loser as some criminal, a realisation he had later in his career.

"We have unrealistic expectations of our children, and that is the primary reason their mental health gets disturbed. It is very important that we understand that it is normal to fail, it is okay to fail," Gopichand said.

The former star player had recently sparked a controversy by saying parents should think twice before letting their children pursue a career in sports unless they were from a rich background. He later clarified that it was disheartening to find a large number of top players in the country seeking jobs due to lack of a support system.

It is in this context that Gopichand was asked about the mental health issues encountered by young national-level stars once they fail to make it big at the senior level.

"For me, the understanding of people of sport is very important. Parents can't be unrealistic, because that is where the biggest abuses happen," Gopichand said.

"Lack of understanding of parents, lack of understanding of society. If you lost, it is almost like you have done a crime. It is just the nature of sport, you could be very good, you could be very hardworking, you could be gritty, determined, all of those very good words we can use, but at the end of the day you could still fail, which is the nature of sport. It could be genetics, you could be unlucky with an injury, many factors.

"To say that winner takes all and the loser is a criminal in some sense, that is way we are looking at it at the moment. I remember, when I lost, somebody will ask 'what happened?' What do you mean by what happened? I lost. Now I can relate to it," Gopichand said.