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Michael Phelps was one of the first athletes to openly struggle with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and depression while still competing. During his career, his perceived identity was tied to his status as an athlete. In retirement, his identity shifted to that of a mental health advocate. This study examines the word choice of newspaper articles on the topic of Phelps and mental health using both social identity and framing theories. Mentions of suicide and seeking help, along with the descriptions of specific types of mental illness and perceived identity assigned to Phelps, were compared between two time periods. Results showed that during Phelps’s career, articles were much more likely to discuss his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis and not as likely to discuss suicide, seeking help, and depression. After his retirement, articles were more likely to identify Phelps as an advocate and less likely to focus on him as a celebrity.

Long and short flow scales are examined from dispositional (n = 652 long; n = 692 short) and state (n = 499 long; n = 865 short) perspectives. The long flow scales constitute a 36-item multidimensional assessment of flow and have previously demonstrated good psychometric properties. The short flow scales constitute new abbreviated versions of the long forms, contain 9 items, and provide a brief measure of flow from a dimensional perspective. In the current study, long and short flow scales are assessed across a large and diverse physical activity sample. With few exceptions, these flow measures demonstrated acceptable model ft, reliability, and distributions; associations with key correlates in parallel and hypothesized ways; and invariance in factor loadings. Together, the scales provide options for assessing flow in different contexts and when different goals or constraints are operating. Researchers wanting to capture an aggregate of the multidimensional framework might find the short scales a pragmatic alternative when constraints prohibit use of the full-length versions.

Based on the Physical Self Description Questionnaire (PSDQ) normative archive (n = 1,607 Australian adolescents), 40 of 70 items were selected to construct a new short form (PSDQ-S). The PSDQ-S was evaluated in a new cross-validation sample of 708 Australian adolescents and four additional samples: 349 Australian elite-athlete adolescents, 986 Spanish adolescents, 395 Israeli university students, 760 Australian older adults. Across these six groups, the 11 PSDQ-S factors had consistently high reliabilities and invariant factor structures. Study 1, using a missing-by-design variation of multigroup invariance tests, showed invariance across 40 PSDQ-S items and 70 PSDQ items. Study 2 demonstrated factorial invariance over a 1-year interval (test–retest correlations .57–.90; Mdn = .77), and good convergent and discriminant validity in relation to time. Study 3 showed good and nearly identical support for convergent and discriminant validity of PSDQ and PSDQ-S responses in relation to two other physical self-concept instruments.