Enhancing mental health awareness and self-management via mindfulness-based exercises: The State of Mind Ireland (SOMI) programme

Time at university is a period for personal and academic growth, characterised by opportunities for identity development, interpersonal relationship formation, and future career decision making (Arnett, 2016). It can also be a time of stress, brought on by instability and uncertainty due to academic need for achievement, financial hardship, and securing graduate employment (American College Health Association, 2018). Making the transition to university can be a challenging period for young people and is often overlooked in preparing students for new life experiences. Student-athletes who are prone to stress and mental health problems because of co-existing academic, social and sporting demands (Wilson & Pritchard, 2005; Bennet, 2007) are often overlookedwhen it comes to mental health support (Breslin et al., 2021). Therefore, The State of Mind Ireland (SOMI) programme was developed in response to the lack of evidence and theory-based programmes designed to enhance mental health awareness of student-athletes (Breslin et al., 2018a). The aim of this chapter is to share the process we followed in developing, recruiting, delivering, and evaluating a third iteration of the SOMI mental health and awareness programme to student athletes (i.e., Shannon et al., 2019).