By Marisa Young | Staff Writer

The life-changing treatment that Ph.D. candidate Dr. Cali Werner received as a distance runner directed the course of her dissertation research.

A nine-time conference championship winner at Rice University, Werner began experiencing symptoms such as anxiety, superstitious behaviors and compulsion surrounding her sport.

“I would have to ask my coach for reassurance, tap certain surfaces multiple times, and could only wear certain colors,” Werner said. “The love that I once had for my sport just became resentment and exhaustion. And I hated it.”

At the age of 21, Werner was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. She began a form of cognitive behavioral therapy known as evidence-based care, and it transformed both her sport and her day-to-day life.

According to Mayo Clinic, OCD is a disorder that involves a series of unwanted fears and anxieties that one fights with compulsions or repetitive behaviors.

“Ultimately, you feel driven to do compulsive acts to ease your stress,” the site reads. “Even if you try to ignore or get rid of bothersome thoughts or urges, they keep coming back. This leads you to act based on ritual. This is the vicious cycle of OCD.”

“The treatment changed my life,” Werner said. “Once I finally got evidence-based treatment, I realized, ‘Wow, people should be getting this earlier.’”

After earning an undergraduate degree in sports management, Werner decided she wanted to focus on OCD research throughout her master’s and doctoral degrees, which she earned at Baylor. She wanted a bigger platform to do advocacy and further research on evidence-based care, which led her to write her dissertation: “Where Do We Go From Here? Mental Health in the World of Elite Sport.”

“As an athlete myself, I really love working with other athletes,” Werner said. “I think there’s a lot of unique components that we just don’t consider could be vulnerabilities for them, so I made that the focus of my study while in my dissertation program.”

Werner competed in the 2020 Olympic Trials, which deepened her passion and understanding of this field of study. Part of her research involved interviewing 20 other Olympic athletes.

“I think a lot of the problem is tied to stigma in that Olympians and successful athletes are viewed as tough people, and it’s not viewed as tough to seek mental health support,” Werner said. “We should really be painting a different message about what toughness means.”

Werner also views time as a big barrier for professional athletes when seeking mental health support, since so much of their schedule is consumed by training and performance.

“With mental illness, you can kind of white-knuckle it a little bit longer, whereas a physical injury, they have to target that and take appropriate care pretty early on,” Werner said.

China Spring junior Courtney Torres said she thinks being a professional athlete can increase vulnerabilities to mental health disorders due to a career built on public performance.

“I think athletes have a lot of pressure from the outside world, with everyone watching their every move,” Torres said. “They have very high expectations on how they should be doing, even if it’s exacerbating their physical health.”

As part of their need to perform well, Torres said athletes often feel they have a front to keep up regarding their mental well-being and resilience.

“I think athletes get a lot of backlash if they are wanting to take a break or take care of themselves,” Torres said. “People hold the standard of, ‘Oh, you’re an Olympic athlete, you should be able to handle the stress.’ But then again, you’re still a human, and your body can only do so much.”

As she moves forward in her research, Werner hopes to dive deeper into the data she collected during her dissertation. During her Ph.D. program, she started Athlete Rising, a practice in which she meets with patients once a week to build “mental performance strategies” for athletes struggling with anxiety-related disorders. Some of these disorders include OCD, generalized anxiety, specific phobias and body dysmorphia. Werner also received grant funding from Baylor in 2024 to continue her research on collegiate and Olympic athletes.

“At some point, I’d really love to create a manual for coaches and athletes, with support systems for athletes to learn some strategies to help with their performance, like cognitive behavioral strategies,” Werner said. “I’d like to decrease the stigma and maybe open the door for athletes to consider therapy down the road.”