Dual Careers for Mental Health (DC4MH), awarded Erasmus + Sport project

DC4MH aims to optimize mental health services within European Dual Career (DC) ‘elite sports and education’ organizations. More specifically, the objective is to develop, implement, and evaluate evidence-based mental health promotion recommendations and tools, centered around mental health structures in DC organizations, mental health monitoring, mental health literacy, preventive psychological resilience-building strategies. The recommendations and tools developed and implemented within this project will allow DC organizations to optimize their support services and facilitate a healthy combination of high-level sports and education. It is projected that 9.195 DC athletes can be involved in this project through the consortium partners.

DC4MH and its outcomes aim to make an impact by bringing direct added value to dual career practice, research and policy by: 

• promoting and increasing awareness on the topic of dual career and mental health, 
• providing opportunities to develop a detailed understanding of dual career and mental health, 
• increasing and enhancing opportunities for the evaluation and development of DC athletes’ and DC stakeholders’ competencies, 
• increasing and enhancing opportunities for the evaluation and optimization of DC support services, and
• facilitating cooperation related to dual career and mental health between sport, education and health stakeholders.

About the Consortium
DC4MH brings together a consortium of 28 experts on mental health and dual career representing 10 organizations from 6 Member States (Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden). The consortium includes a range of different DC organizations (i.e. national sport governing bodies, high performance center, elite sport club, universities, sport gymnasium) and span both secondary education and higher education:

• Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• RSC Anderlecht
• Team Danmark, Riksidrottsförbundet
• CAR Sant Cugat
• Gimnazija Šiška
• Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• Högskolan i Halmstad
• Università degli Studi di Verona
• University of Ljubljana
• World Health Organization. 

The consortium is coordinated by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Dr. Koen De Brandt. Miquel Torregrossa and Yago Ramis are the UAB team contact persons.