Center on Smart and Connected Health Technologies, Mays Cancer Center, School of Nursing, UT Health San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas 78229, USA.
Department of Humanities, Institute of Technology Carlow, Carlow R93 V960, Ireland.
Brain Behav Immun. 2022 May;102:206-208. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2022.02.028. Epub 2022 Feb 28.
Just weeks away from the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the United States, followed by Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada, has declared a diplomatic boycott of the Games. A diplomatic boycott stipulates that while government officials of these countries will not attend the event, the athletes' scheduled attendance will largely remain intact. An unintended consequence of the boycotts is that they force the attending athletes to cope with the stress and distress associated with the 2022 Winter Olympics in an unfamiliar environment on their own. It is important to underscore that many of the challenges the athletes could face amid the Games are either deep-rooted or unprecedented, ranging from stressors fuelled by the nonstop media reports, the competitions, to the Omicron scares. These insights combined, in turn, underscore the imperative for effective and preemptive mental health support for Olympic athletes. To shed light on the issue, this paper highlights the reasons why timely solutions are needed to adequately safeguard Olympic athletes' mental health and overall wellbeing, and underlines promising technology-based solutions that can be cost-effectively designed and developed for the athletes.
距离北京 2022 年冬季奥运会开幕式仅几周之际，美国、澳大利亚、英国和加拿大相继宣布外交抵制奥运会。外交抵制规定，这些国家的政府官员不会出席该活动，但运动员的参赛计划将基本保持不变。抵制带来的一个意想不到的后果是，这迫使参赛运动员在一个陌生的环境中独自应对与 2022 年冬季奥运会相关的压力和困扰。重要的是要强调，运动员在比赛中可能面临的许多挑战要么是根深蒂固的，要么是前所未有的，从由不停的媒体报道、比赛带来的压力源，到奥密克戎的担忧。这些观点结合在一起，强调了为奥运运动员提供有效和预防性心理健康支持的必要性。为了阐明这个问题，本文强调了为什么需要及时的解决方案来充分保障奥运运动员的心理健康和整体福祉，并强调了有前途的基于技术的解决方案，可以为运动员进行具有成本效益的设计和开发。
