By Kathleen Berger, Executive Producer of Science and Technology

Opportunities for middle schoolers and high schoolers to be part of team sports are encouraged because of the mental health benefits. So, whether it’s Friday night lights, fall soccer or volleyball, or any team sport on the court, track, field, golf course or swimming pool – playing youth team sports may prove to be an invaluable public health strategy.

“Any team sport is great for adolescents’ mental health,” said Massy Mutumba, PhD, assistant professor at the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis.

Mutumba said participating on two or more sports teams of different types of sports is a shield against suicide risk in teens and preteens. She said the data does not correlate with participation on two or more teams of the same sport.

“One is protective, but two or more has an additional benefit,” she said.

The recommendation is based on Mutumba’s recently published U.S. analysis spanning more than 800,000 students in the United States. According to Mutumba, middle and high school students participating on two or more different sports teams are significantly less likely to report suicidal thoughts or behaviors, even as youth suicide rates have climbed at an alarming rate. Mutumba said youth suicide is a serious public health crisis. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for kids ages 10-14 and the third-leading cause of death for ages 15-24.

“Our interest was mostly looking at CDC data that shows an increase in suicide ideation among adolescents who are younger,” Mutumba said. “Data suggests it can begin even as early as (age) 6, you see children as early as age six begin to manifest these symptoms, including thoughts around suicide ideation. So, the goal was our interest in finding what can we do, what sort of interventions can we do to address suicide risk.”

Mutumba completed the sports participation analysis alongside her co-authors while at the University of Michigan, before joining WashU’s School of Public Health which opened in 2025. The School of Public Health is WashU’s first new school in 100 years. Located in the Cortex Innovation District in St. Louis, the goal of the School of Public Health is to meet current and future challenges in public health in St. Louis and globally.

“One of the key motivations was to do my work on suicide (studies and prevention) among children in the St. Louis area. It’s kind of hard to do that from a distance,” she said. “We are going to work initially with a focus on youth of color because the rates of suicide are increasing exponentially within these groups compared to other groups.”

As Mutumba’s work in St. Louis begins, she brings her message about the benefits of team sports.

“It’s self-esteem that you are going to get, it’s the skills, overcoming adversity – you lose, you win, you learn to manage that. It’s also the social connections,” Mutumba explained. “A lot of the skills are transferrable. What they are learning within sports doesn’t remain within sports. It is something that is building their character and helping them overcome this adversity. But for us, what we really speculate – it’s the social relationships they’re building, the connections they’re building, that are very beneficial.”

While participating on team sports lessens the risk for suicide, her good news faces a problem. Mutumba’s analysis also found that sports participation has declined in recent years.

“Starting from 2017, really looking at what the trends were, you see a much bigger drop among middle school students participating in sports.”

She said sports need to be accessible and scalable.

“School used to be the place where kids get into sports. You had all these sports programs in schools. We are finding a lot of that has been eroded. That erosion of the school-based sports program, I think, has been a big contributor,” she said. “If you have a younger child and you want them to participate in sports, you have to pay. And most often you are working with that entity outside the school setting for them (your children) to be able to participate in that.”

Mutumba recommends a sustainable public health strategy for suicide prevention. Maybe now a new approach to the power of sports will be in the playbook.

“That would allow us to then use that as the foundation for building a program that would really emphasize sports as a mechanism of addressing suicidal behaviors.”