When the difficulty has left the sport. Mentoring works on performance under pressure, confidence, habits and the relationships around a young athlete. If mood, sleep, eating or friendships have changed, that is clinical territory and it needs a clinician.

What mentoring is for

A young person who is capable but doubting. Who is better in training than in competition. Who loses days to a bad performance rather than hours. Who is carrying more than they can currently structure and needs help building the structure.

That work is practical, it is about performance, and it happens with the parents informed and involved.

What needs a clinician

Persistent low mood lasting weeks rather than days. Changes to sleeping or eating that are not explained by training load. Withdrawal from friends as well as from the sport. Panic symptoms. Anything self critical that has moved from I played badly to something about their worth as a person.

Anything at all suggesting self harm, which needs same day attention rather than an appointment in a fortnight.

None of that is a performance problem and none of it improves with mental skills work.

How to raise it with your child

Plainly, without making it larger than it is. Say what you have noticed rather than what you have concluded. You have seemed flat for a few weeks and I would like us to see the doctor works better than anything involving the word worried.

Expect resistance, and expect it to be about not wanting to be a problem. Young athletes are practised at being fine.

The route

In the UK, your GP is the way in and can refer on to child and adolescent mental health services, or advise on private options. Elsewhere the entry point differs, through a family physician, a paediatrician, a school psychologist or a national health service, but the principle is the same: go through a medical professional rather than trying to find a specialist directly.

If your child is at a school with a counselling service, that is usually quicker and worth using in parallel rather than instead.

What a good mentor does

Tells you. Unprompted, early, and without being asked. Anyone working with young people should be able to say clearly where their work stops, should have someone they refer on to, and should be more willing to lose the work than to hold on to something that needs a professional.

If you have asked a provider where their limits are and received a vague answer, that is a reason to look elsewhere.

They can run together

This is not a choice between the two. A young person can be seeing a clinician about anxiety and working with a mentor on their sport, and that often works well provided everyone knows what everyone else is doing.

What does not work is a mentor quietly doing therapy they are not qualified for.