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Special Olympics Health Screenings Include Help With Stress

The New York State Summer  Games for the Special Olympics held on Friday and Saturday features free health screenings, as those types of activities have done all over the world. But there's a new program organizers have been trying out for the Special Olympics' athletes.

It's called Strong Minds, and it teaches the participants techniques they can use so that they don't get too stressed out.

Onolee Stephan is a community health official with Special Olympics, and she says the techniques used with these athletes include simple ways of modifying the way they view their participation in the event. 

“When you lose a competition, do you really tell yourself that you’re a loser, and you really kind of beat yourself up about things, or do you say that you tried your hardest and you’re going to work even harder before the next competition and that you did your best?”

Stephan says that stress is something that everybody has in life and especially competitive athletes, and she tells WXXI news that, “Special Olympics athletes are competitive athletes, and so they need to be able to deal with the stress of training and competing in sport and so this is designed to give them tools that they need for that, then of course will transfer into daily life.”

Stephan says these techniques are also being taught to Special Olympics volunteers from all over the world. 

The health screenings and strong minds program have been made possible through the donations made by the Golisano Foundation which last year, with philanthropist Tom Golisano gave another $25 million toward these efforts.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.