Mental Health in Elite Sports: Professor Rosemary Purcell to speak at the 2025 FISU World Conference
From 17 – 19 July 2025, the FISU World Conference will take place as part of the Rhine-Ruhr 2025 FISU World University Games – with a thematic focus on sustainability and mental health in sports. Among the distinguished speakers is Rosemary Purcell, one of the world’s leading experts on mental health in elite sports.
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Who is Rosemary Purcell?
Rosemary Purcell is a professor at the University of Melbourne, where she leads the research programme on elite sport and mental health at the Centre for Youth Mental Health. She also heads the department of knowledge transfer at Orygen, Australia's national centre for early intervention in youth mental health. She is a trained and registered psychologist, author of over 170 peer-reviewed publications, and a consultant to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Her research explores how sport environments can be shaped to promote peak performances as well as mental well-being. In a 2018 publication, a key milestone in her work, she and her colleagues demonstrated how mental health can be systemically embedded in elite sports. “We applied concepts like the socio-ecological model to sport – with the goal of reshaping athletes’ environments in ways that support, rather than endanger, mental health,” she explains.
From Ordinary People to International Expert
Her interest in psychology was sparked as a teenager by the book and film Ordinary People, which highlights the healing power of therapeutic relationships. This early inspiration marked the beginning of a remarkable academic and professional journey at the crossroads of clinical research, mental health, and elite sport.
What Can Participants Expect at the FISU World Conference?
In her keynote at the FISU World Conference, Rosemary Purcell will explore topics such as:
How the mental health of youth athletes compares to their non-athletic peers
How organizations can systematically foster healthy sport environments
What’s needed to enable elite youth athletes to perform at their best, without compromising their mental health?
“Many elite athletes are highly self-critical – that drives them, but over time it can become exhausting. Self-compassion can provide a necessary counterbalance,” Rosemary emphasizes.
A key topic of hers is raising awareness among coaches, sportsofficials, and teams about the mental health of young athletes. “We need to support them deliberately – using evidence-based approaches like self-determination theory and modern communication strategies,” says Purcell.
A Cultural Shift in Sports
Rosemary sees positive developments in how mental health is addressed in sports: “More and more athletes are sharing their stories, proving that mental health challenges don’t have to mean the end of a career. Mental health issues should be treated just like physical injuries - as something that can be healed to restore full performance.”