New UNLV program helps young girls with mental health, body image

There’s a new UNLV program that’s using sports to help middle school-aged girls cope with mental health and body image issues.  

Started in January, it’s called RUSH: Raiders, UNLV, Sport, and Health, and yes, the Las Vegas Raiders are involved. The team and UNLV (as well as other partners) are trying to usher young women — who are twice as likely to drop out of sports before high school than their male peers — into flag football, which is available in Clark County high schools, and will soon be an Olympic sport.

“[We’re introducing] flag football to girls in junior high in the hopes that they will get interested in sport — maybe that sport, maybe a different sport — and think about playing sports in high school because of all the great benefits that we receive from participating in sports,” says Jennifer Pharr, a professor of public health at UNLV who led the development of RUSH, which currently includes two all-day clinics a year for CCSD middle-school girls.

Pharr’s research indicates that an increasing rate of girls experience anxiety, depression, and boy image issues as pre-teens, and social media is not helping matters.

“All kids who participate in sports have improved mental health,” says Pharr. “So they have less anxiety, less depression, improved well-being. And we think part of that is just having a group of friends, going for a goal together, having healthy competition. There’s so many things that come from being in sports: learning leadership, learning how to set a goal and achieve it. A lot of that is what helps combat mental health issues like anxiety and depression and things like that. Also, just getting off your screen going outside and playing sports, right? If you’re scrolling through your screen, looking at other people — what they’re doing, what they look like — that affects your mental health. So just getting them off those screens and out, playing sports with other kids is helpful.”

It was a no-brainer partnership for the Raiders, says the team’s youth football director Myles Hayes. The Raiders have various programs for facilitating Las Vegas-area kids’ participation in sports.

“One thing that I really enjoy about [RUSH] is kind of eliminating barriers, so to speak, to equipment, information, transportation, food — all those things that play a part in somebody’s participation in sports. The program eliminates [those barriers]. So they can just focus on being a kid and having fun.”

Guests: Dr. Jennifer Pharr, professor of public health, UNLV and lead, Raiders, UNLV, Sport, and Health (RUSH) program; Myles Hayes, director of youth football, Las Vegas Raiders