This past week marked the arrival of the 2010 Major League baseball season.  And as with last year, this season already has three developing stories of athletes dealing with Social Anxiety.

During the 2009 season, infielder Khalil Greene, then of the St. Louis Cardinals, missed 46 games during two stretches on the disabled list due to Social Anxiety.  During the off-season, Greene signed a one-year contract worth $750,000 with the Texas Rangers.  Unfortunately, Greene’s Social Anxiety continues to be a significant issue, and reportedly was the reason for his failure to report to spring training camp in Arizona.  As a result, the Rangers have voided his contract, though they reportedly are leaving the door open for him to return to the team.

Meanwhile, an apparently happier story is unfolding in Detroit, where former all star and rookie of the year Dontrelle Willis is attempting to make a comeback.  After a 2009 season in which he too had a couple of stints on the disabled list due to Social Anxiety, Willis appeared strong in his first start of the season last Thursday.  After struggling in the first inning, during which he walked two batters, he went on to complete six innings in the Tigers 7-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals.

Of course, Kansas City is the baseball home of Zack Greinke, last season’s big Social Anxiety story.  Even casual baseball fans were delighted by his spectacular turnaround in 2009.  After nearly abandoning baseball in 2006 due to his Social Anxiety, Greinke went 16-8 in 2009, with a 2.16 ERA.  He then spent his off-season collecting the 2009 Cy Young award and marrying Emily Kuchar, a former Miss Daytona Beach and Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.  In two starts thus far in 2010, he is 0-1, with a 3.55 ERA.

All of this points to the ongoing issue of how baseball and other professional sports have never taken the issue of mental health very seriously.  It seems that teams (and fans) expect players to have an innate ability to withstand the huge pressures of performing at the professional level.

As we noted here previously (July 2, 2009), huge salaries and 24 hour-a-day sports coverage on cable channels are stressors that athletes in previous generations didn’t have.  Another factor may be that many baseball players (and other athletes) turn pro at a very young age, and as such, don’t have the opportunity to fully develop emotionally before suddenly being faced with the pressures of professional sports.

For more on this topic, I strongly recommend Roy Johnson’s op-ed piece that ran last week on the ESPN website in which he notes that “baseball and other sports must learn to do as good a job of diagnosing and treating “mind” injuries as they do when the body breaks down”.  Let’s hope leagues and owners are listening.

Next week – anxiety disorders in other sports.

•Tom Corboy, MFT, is the director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles, a private, outpatient clinic specializing in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and related conditions. He can be contacted director@ocdla.com.

As reported in a previous entry here (July 2, 2009), major league baseball has in recent years seen a spike in the number of players reporting symptoms of Social Anxiety.  Perhaps the most noteworthy example of this trend is Zack Greinke of the Kansas City Royals, who missed much of the 2006 season due to his struggles with the condition.

What a difference a few years makes.

This year, Greinke was the dominant pitcher in the American League, going 16-8 with an ERA of just 2.16.  He started the season with six straight victories, with a remarkable 0.40 ERA over that span.  He was selected to the American League all-star team, and pitched a perfect inning in the summer classic.  He came back after the break and went 6-1 in August, and had a 1.75 ERA in his final 11 starts.  Imagine what he could have done on a good team!

Greinke was honored for his spectacular season by being named the best pitcher in the American League by both the Sporting News and the MLB Players Association.  His incredible turnaround year was capped this week when it was announced that he was the American League Cy Young Award winner, the highest honor a pitcher can receive.

Just three years ago, many in baseball were concerned that Greinke, then a struggling 23-year old, would never live up to his potential in the big leagues.  His Social Anxiety was severe enough that he missed two months of the season and sought out treatment with a sports psychologist.  He came back the hard way, returning to the minors and eventually earning his way back to the Royals, and into their starting rotation.

As Greinke stands at the top of his profession, it is worth repeating that he has accomplished all this while battling Social Anxiety.  It’s hard enough for anyone to challenge this potentially disabling disorder.  Now imagine challenging it in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans and on national television.  Greinke is testimony to the fact that Social Anxiety can be managed and overcome if a person seeks help and dedicates themselves to facing their fears head on.  He deserves all the accolades he is receiving, and is an inspiration for people everywhere struggling with Social Anxiety.

•Tom Corboy, MFT, is the director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles, a private, outpatient clinic specializing in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and related conditions.  He can be contacted director@ocdla.com.

Researchers already knew from previous studies that the gene, called OPRM1, regulates the body’s internal painkillers, known as mu-opioids.  In layman’s terms, the presence of this gene variation results in people actually feeling more pain in response to being physically hurt. What is so interesting about the new study is that researchers discovered this same gene variation also appears to regulate the level of distress felt if one is socially hurt.

And this finding is not just supported by people’s subjective reports of experiencing distress when being rejected.  The researchers also performed functional MRIs of the brains of those with this gene while exposing them to a computer program that simulated social rejection.  What they found was that those with the gene variation reported higher levels of distress in response to social rejection, and also exhibited more activity in the social pain–related regions of the brain – specifically the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula.  In other words, those with this gene variation not only had the subjective experience of heightened “rejection sensitivity”, but they also had more objectively measurable activity in the parts of the brain associated with social pain.

This research supports and furthers previous research done at UCLA in 2003.  That study found that the anterior cingulate cortex is more active when those with rejection sensitivity feel socially hurt.  The new study takes that discovery one step further in highlighting how this part of the brain is not just more active in the socially sensitive, but also how this activity is mediated by a specific gene.

Taken together, these two studies provide the most advanced clues yet as to how and why some people experience social rejection with such force.  And for those with Social Anxiety / Social Phobia, these studies not only provide evidence that their suffering is real, but also provide hopeful avenues for future research that may one day lead to better treatments for this condition.

•Stacey Kuhl-Wochner, LCSW, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker at the the OCD Center of Los Angeles, a private, outpatient clinic specializing in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and related conditions.  She can be contacted stacey@ocdla.com.

Greene’s story has been accompanied by two other high-profile Social Anxiety stories getting lots of coverage by the sports media.  Dontrelle Willis, a pitcher with the Detroit Tigers, has been on the DL twice this season as well, both times reportedly due to Social Anxiety.  And Zack Greinke, a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, missed much of the 2006 season due to his combined diagnoses of Social Anxiety and Depression.  He took seven months off and sought treatment with a sports psychologist and has returned to great success.  He is having a career year in 2009, going 9-3 thus far, with an ERA of 0.96.

The question arises whether these cases represent a growing sensitivity within professional sports’ regarding psychiatric issues, or whether the pressures of being a professional athlete have become so intense as to lead to an increase in these problems. Some believe that huge salaries, multiple 24 hour-a-day sports channels, and even the internet may be contributing to athletes being under far more social stress than athletes experienced in earlier, less-demanding times.  In either case, it seems that these cases are bringing Social Anxiety into the consciousness of the American public, and hopefully encouraging an open discussion of this often debilitating condition.

•Tom Corboy, MFT, is the director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles, a private, outpatient clinic specializing in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and related conditions.  He can be contacted director@ocdla.com.