Defense of Maximiliano Devoto's doctoral thesis on the promotion and care of mental health and its transfer for high performance

The thesis highlights the need to examine the athletes' environment, address the entire continuum of care, and proposes the usefulness of developing transferable resources to promote and care for mental health in high performance.

The researcher from the PhD Programme in Health and Sport Psychology at the UAB, Maximiliano Devoto, analyzes mental health in high-performance contexts in this thesis with a twofold objective. First, to explore and understand mental health in high-performance contexts from evolutionary, ecological, and salutogenic perspectives. Second, to develop resources that are transferable to practice. The work, directed by Dr. Miquel Torregrossa Álvarez, Dr. Joan Pons Bauzá, and Dr. Anna Jordana Casas, provides information to critically analyze conceptual frameworks, scientific recommendations, and interventions for the promotion and care of mental health, offering practical tools for decision-making by professionals in the field.

The project empirically examines how career experiences, personal resources, and environmental conditions relate to mental health in high performance. It also explores the needs perceived by athletes and their environment regarding the promotion and care of mental health. From here, it develops a co-produced mental health intervention with professionals and researchers who are members of the CAR of Sant Cugat, the Vrije Universiteit de Brussels (VUB), and the Grup d'Estudis de Psicologia de l'Esport (GEPE), and proposes the use of metaphors as a transfer resource. This work has been developed within the framework of the PhD Programme in Health and Sport Psychology at the UAB.

The doctoral research was structured as a compendium of articles and meets the requirements to opt for the international doctorate mention. It includes two published studies and another two under review. In the first published study, the central objective was to explore different dimensions of psychological well-being in sports. In the paper Experiencias de carrera dual y salud mental en estudiantes deportistas de alto rendimiento, the interaction between the experiences of developing a dual career in the academic-sports field, literacy, and the mental health status of the athletes was examined. Meanwhile, the study The Mountaineering Expedition as a Mental Health Support Metaphor for European High-Performance Athletes creates a metaphor based on the needs identified by the athletes to transfer support resources and promote mental health in high-performance sports.