Byron Butler/Coady Media
Voss: Jockeys, Please Give This New Tool A Chance
My ears perked up during Thursday’s session of the International Jockey Concussion, Safety and Wellness Conference when HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus and Jockeys’ Guild president/CEO Terry Meyocks announced some news.
In a joint effort between HISA and the Guild, riders who are either covered persons via HISA or Guild members riding in non-HISA states will now have access to free mental health services in English and Spanish via the online platform Onrise. Soon, stickers will appear in jocks’ rooms at U.S. racetracks with a QR code that jockeys can scan at their discretion if they want to access Onrise services.
I’ve always tremendously admired jockeys and have long thought they should be placed front and center (alongside the horses) as the celebrities of the sport. As a child, I idolized them for their bravery and their talent to partner with the horses I loved so much. Even then, as a once-a-week lesson-taker on tired hunter ponies, I had some appreciation for how physically difficult their jobs were and how easy they made them look.
As an adult, I understand that while they’re half of the team that crosses the wire, jockeys have a lot of needs and challenges our sport mostly ignores. Many of them, though they love their jobs, are often working while hungry, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, and through the pain of injuries. Many have no financial stability, sometimes doing morning works for free, while enduring social media harassment and extraordinary, conflicting pressures from trainers, owners, and agents. It’s not surprising incidence of drug and alcohol abuse is so high among jockeys; it’s surprising that it isn’t higher.
It's little wonder then, that the handful of studies researchers have managed to do on professional jockeys’ mental health have found they have higher rates of certain types of mental health issues than other professional athletes. Dr. Claudia Reardon, professor at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health, did a rundown of the available literature on the subject at this week’s conference. Up to 26 percent of elite athletes experience depression (roughly in line with the general population), but in jockeys the rate is higher – 35 to 57 percent. Generalized anxiety is found in 21 percent of jockeys, but 6 to 15 percent of other elite athletes. Disordered eating is found in somewhere between 6 and 45 percent of female elite athletes and 0 to 19 percent of male elite athletes, depending on which study you read, but it’s 60 percent for jockeys, regardless of gender.
We pay lip service to all this, but very few of us put our money where our mouths are. Riders often don’t have health insurance because their jobs are so risky they can’t get it or can’t afford it (which is why, up until now, there was uneven access to mental health services), so injuries are expensive for them. And if those injuries are life-altering, they’re at the mercy of the industry’s kindness for long-term care and support. Retired jockey Donna Barton Brothers, who moderated the event, noted that during its 18 years of existence, the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund has been unable to increase the number of riders in need of its assistance because donations haven’t changed much through the years.
All of this to say, I’ve never been a jockey, but I’m hoping some rider somewhere will give me enough credit to listen when I say this – please give these services a chance.
Onrise is designed specifically for athletes, so although riding races is a unique profession, the providers in the system have a better frame of reference for your mentality than a general practitioner might. They’re accessible through your phone so you can fit a session in quickly. They’re also independent of both HISA and the Guild, having been established in 2018. Because of the strict confidentiality regulations around mental health services, you shouldn’t be concerned that regulators or others in the industry are going to know who is seeking help or what they’re telling their provider. Systems like this are set up intentionally to remove this kind of barrier. According to its website, Onrise offers both direct counseling and peer support as well as educational articles to walk you through coping devices for social media harassment, injuries, and slumps. Sports psychologists are also able to help you optimize mental health for better performance, even if you’re not facing mental health adversity right now.
The culture around mental health is shifting, thanks in part to elite athletes who have been willing to open up about their own challenges and to normalize the act of seeking help. But we all know the equestrian world can be a few steps behind culture shifts like this one. It doesn’t have to be this way. If you’re a rider who’s struggling, give these services a try. If you’re a journeyman with the respect of your colony, encourage them to use this if they need it. It may make a critical difference for someone.
