New initiative aims to build supports for student athlete struggling with mental illness

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The Student Athlete Mental Health Initiative launched Friday on Twitter and Facebook. Its founders, former University of Ottawa student Samantha DeLenardo and Carleton University student Krista Van Slingerland, hope the initiative will eventually pull double duty as a student athlete mental health advocacy group and a counselling directory for student athletes in Canada. For Van Slingerland, 22, breathing life into the initiative is about ensuring that struggling student athletes have access to support structures that did not exist when she struggled with mental illness. For three years, Van Slingerland, now in her fourth year at Carleton, played on the school’s women’s basketball team. However, a maelstrom of pressures — personal, academic, social and athletic — took their toll.

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