ISSP Master Class Series – Lecture #5
Fostering Mental Health in Sport Organizations
Date: Tuesday, January 30th, 2024
Speakers: Dr. Charlie Maher
Length of Session: 90 minutes (60-minute lecture, 30-minute Q&A)
Language: English (Translated live captioning available)
Time: 13:00 UTC (New York 8:00, Rio de Janeiro, 10:00; Paris, 14:00; Beijing 21:00, Kuala Lampur 21:00, Seoul 22:00)
Where: Zoom (Link sent upon registration)
Program Overview
Professional sport organizations are complex, adaptive systems. These organizations serve many purposes including the generation of revenue, competing for championships, acquiring, developing, and facilitating the transition of athletes, managing rosters, and creating compelling experiences for their fans. The attainment of these purposes involves a range of people and their pursuit affects how these organizations prepare, cope with daily demands, and deal with results. Within this context, therefore, the mental health and well-being of athletes, coaches, and staff members is an important investment for ownership and key organizational stakeholders. Dr. Maher has 35 years of experience as a sports psychology practitioner in professional sport organizations in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. His presentation will have the following intentions: (a) discuss how mental health can be usefully considered as an adaptive way of being; (b) illustrate how the task of fostering mental health is the responsibility of coaches, support staff, executives, and athletes; (c) identify opportunities for how these stakeholders can contribute to a mentally healthy sport organization; (d) provide an approach to the planning and evaluation of mental health initiatives; and (e) offer how reflection, continuing education, and purposeful action can contribute to the ongoing development of the sport psychology practitioner.
About the Speakers
Charles A Maher, PsyD, MBA, CMPC, FAASP is sport, performance, and organizational psychologist for the Cleveland Guardians Baseball Organization, wherein he also oversees the baseball sport psychology and business psychology programs, psychological assessment for the draft, and directs the employee assistance program. Likewise, he is senior advisor to the President and General Manager. Charlie also is a Professor Emeritus of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, where he was Chair of the Department of Applied Psychology, founded the Rutgers Sport Psychology Concentration, and served as sport psychologist for the athletic department and its teams for many years. As a licensed psychologist, Charlie has served as a team sport psychologist and consultant for 35 years to a range of teams and professional sport organizations in the United States, Canada, and Latin America, particularly in the sports of baseball, American football, men’s and women’s basketball, ice hockey, and men’s and women’s tennis. Charlie has published many articles and authored several books focused on sport, performance, and organizational psychology. He is Senior Associate Editor of the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action. Moreover, Charlie advises Major League Baseball about mental performance and mental health initiatives, and, within that context, he is the Founder and President Emeritus of the Professional Baseball Performance Psychology Group. He also is a former college and high school basketball and baseball coach. Charlie attempts to keep himself grounded through recognition that participation in elite and professional sports is what he does but it is not who he is, overall.
Program Format
Attendees can participate in an ISSP Master Class session right from their office or home. Upon registration, registrants will be provided the Zoom link to access the presentation on the web in real-time. If you are unable to watch the session live, a recording will be provided afterward to all registrants.
Cost (in USD)
