Depression In Sports Psychology

Ashley Miller from Az central explains the impact sports have on mental health claiming that “exercise can decrease mild symptoms of depression and anxiety and promote improved quality of sleep -- a problem for many people suffering from mental health disorders”. Sports can not only assist in a decline of mental disorders such as depression and anxiety but can also enhance sleeping. They can aide in maintaining a clear mind to those who are conflicted upon sleeping at night due to an obscurance in the brain leading to a an aseptic

One group took part in an aerobic exercise program, another was given SSRI, (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) which is a used as an antidepressant in many athletes struggling to cope with pressure. The third group was to do both of the programs together. At the 16-week mark, depression had lowered in all three groups. In fact, about 60-70% of the participants could no longer be classified as having severe depression (June 2009 Harvard Medical School). The groups scores rating on levels of depression were relatively the same, this suggests that for those who need or want to avoid drugs, exercise in a suitable substitute for antidepressants. Keep in mind though, that the swiftest response occurred with the group taking antidepressants and that it can be difficult to stay motivated to exercise when you are depressed. This shows how beneficial exercise can be when trying to relieve depression in athletes and social sport participants but this is not true for elite athletes as exercise is already a massive contributor to their lives, so although that exercise can help people suffering from depression, there is clearly other severe factors that are affecting an elite athletes mental

The negative impact mental health has had on student-athletes is a continuous problem across the globe and has been a topic of interest in the research world for many years. The stigma behind mental health have lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety, reluctance to seek help, the sense of helplessness and loneliness and many more. In a student-athlete, these stress levels are brought upon the individual for multiple reasons. For example, student-athletes have to accomplish a certain degree of success both on the playing field and in the classroom (A.P. , Deitrick, J.M. , & Reynolds, E. (2016). Maintaining a required average and playing time can become not only physically but mentally exhausting. This literature review will discuss the barriers and facilitators to mental health in student-athletes and how the stigmatization of those student-athletes who suffer from a mental illness have an impact on their everyday life.

Granito Jr. and Vincent J. did a study in 2002 over the psychological response to athletic injury. The purpose of their study was to describe the athletic injury experience, focusing on differences between male and female athletes. 31 injured athletes (15 male and 16 female) were interviewed about their athletic injury. Each participant went through an interview process, consisting of an in-depth interview and follow-up telephone interviews. The interview data were analyzed, and compared between the male and female athletes. The results showed that female athletes tended to perceive the coaches as much more negative with respect to how the coach treated them following their injury; were less likely to talk about a significant other (boyfriend/girlfriend); and were more concerned about how the injury would influence their health at a future point. Conclusions focused on possible explanations and how the results fit into the current theory for the psychological response to injury for each gender.

Are you at more risk to develop a mental illness if you are a professional athlete?

Youth sports is a common thing for kids to be apart of growing up, parents sign their kids up in hope of creating lifelong friendships, encouraging physical activity, and most of all to have fun. Youth sports was also created to introduce all different types of sports to children and have it open their eyes to different activities. Calvin H. Chang is the author of Handbook of Sports Psychology. Cheng explains how stress is caused at such a young age and most likely because of the pressure of their parents. Cheng mentioned “behavioral indicators of state anxiety include insomnia, losing one’s appetite, nervous laughter and being jittery. Physiological changes include increased heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin responses, and palmar sweating. Psychological measures include state anxiety and other in-depth measurements of negative thoughts and feelings” (Cheng 172). The stress from youth sports is taking a toll on children and causing their body more harm than good. Parents want what is best for their children, but they are pushing them harder than what they can handle. Jane E. Brody is the Personal Health columnist for The New York Times. She joined The Times as a

Carol Seheult, a sports psychologist was noted saying, “When I see professional footballers they insist on complete secrecy because they fear it could get back to their manager, they worry that they'd be seen as wimps” (Dunning, 2003). The social constructs of male athletes and how they should be strong and not emotional has allowed the community to scrutinize athletes who don’t keep up with this manly image. Athletes continue to play in sports regardless of their mental health issues as they are afraid to speak on the issues themselves. This leaves many male athletes unable to get the help they need or the time they need to recover. Instead they continue rigorous training regimes that only add stress to already present problems. This is an image that has been constructed as a society and is one that require athletes to push themselves to victory even though they are suffering from mental illnesses. The social constructs created by society prevent many athletes from receiving the hep they need and is a problem that can only be solved as a

The first think I decided to research was the view that most athletes have about sports psychologist and attending therapy? Do athlete share the same mistaken view that many other people have about psychology and therapy. Yes, they do. In fact, the feared stigma that

For High Performance athletes, there can be a lot riding on their results and performance in competition. If athletes develop an over-reliance on sporting success as a source of self-worth and identity, it can lead to serious emotional issues if things do not go as desired. Athletes often identify their self-worth with their ability to perform, and performance failure has been significantly associated with depression (Taylor, 2015 pg.11; Troijan, 2016, pg. 137) Athletes face many struggles and when something goes wrong it can leave them not knowing where to turn for help. They can be left with they feelings that they are nothing, undeserving, and alone. This may also exacerbate their feelings of seclusion, depression, or grief. Most athletes

Martinant and Ferrant (2007) aim to comprise clusters of athletes based on their anxiety and to compare them on their levels of perfectionism and self confidence. The authors used the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory - 2 and Sport-multidimensional perfectionism scale to gather results. The results determined five different clusters of athletes based on anxiety criteria. The subgroups not only separated by anxiety intensity and frequency, but also by direction of anxiety. For example, the anxious debilitators contained athletes with high somatic and cognitive anxiety levels with low anxiety direction, which resulted in a debilitating effect. Interestingly, the anxious facilitator group endured the same level of intensity and frequency, but directed their

In earlier days sports psychology was mostly concerned with developing assessment methods that would identify those people with the potential to become serious superior athletes. Today the focus is on psychological training, exercises that strengthen the mental skills that will help athletic performances on the path to excellence. These skills include mental imagery and focus training. If an athlete is serious about becoming the best he or she can possibly be, the most essential ingredient is commitment to practice the right things. It takes incredible commitment to reach the top: a commitment to rest and train the body so it can perform under the most demanding conditions and a commitment to train the mind to

letes will tell you from a young age that they aspire to be the best in the sport that they do. Whether its making it to that Division one school or becoming an elite athlete in the professional sense, where the individual now earns a living from playing said sport. Athletes are defined as an individual who has trained and/or become skilled in sports, exercise, or games in which require physical strength, stamina, and agility (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). This then posses the question, can an individual whom is not at their best physical strength or agility or stamina be someone that we’d consider an athlete? We’ve seen over time an increase in the concern of athlete’s health whether it be from alcohol and/or drug abuse, and eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or other disordered eating patterns. Both problems could be detrimental to the individual’s health and both raise ethical dilemmas for a coach to consider. In this paper we will further discuss the issues associated with both drug or substance abuse and eating disorders in athletes.

In the world many people are sad and depressed and just don’t feel the need to do anything at all other than sulk and wish they were dead, this is not the way someone should live. There should be some way to take someone out of this depressive state or to keep someone from ever reaching it but what? The answer is organized sports and their ability to kick start hormones in the body and allow for a new sense of happiness within the body. To find out the depression levels of the participants and see if physical activity effects all participants with different levels of depression or only participates of low levels of depression, we will use a beck depression scale to test the levels of the participants throughout the study. This is important because it will help to bring about a new way to keep a large amount of people away from depression because we know the effects of physical activity on society in order keep depression at a controllable rate.

I hope to use this literature to help shape and develop my study and research in hopes to get the same results if not better. I hope to be able to create ways to maybe even fix bugs that are in this study and completely form a more perfect study with information that will help strengthen the argument of sports and their relationship with depression.

Enforcing young children to participate in intensive training for a sport has a direct correlation with developing psychological disturbances. Through accumulated stress from extreme training and competitions, young athletes can become mentally drained; ultimately, the athletes reach a state of a psychological burnout, which leads to “lack of energy, sadness, frequent illness, and loss of interest in training and competing” (O’Dell & Tietjen, 1997). Moreover, due to the preoccupation with perfectionism and the expectations of parents and coaches, children can develop a lack of confidence, and the fear of