The Mental Health of Elite Athletes: A Narrative Systematic Review

By S. Rice, R. Purcell, Stefanie de Silva, D. Mawren, Patrick D. McGorry, A. Parker. Sports Medicine, 2016

1,051 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BackgroundThe physical impacts of elite sport participation have been well documented; however, there is comparatively less research on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of elite athletes.ObjectiveThis review appraises the evidence base regarding the mental health and wellbeing of elite-level athletes, including the incidence and/or nature of mental ill-health and substance use.MethodsA systematic search of the PubMed, EMBASE, SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, Cochrane and Google Scholar databases, up to and including May 2015, was conducted.ResultsThe search yielded a total of 2279 records. Following double screening, 60 studies were included. The findings suggested that elite athletes experience a broadly comparable risk of high-prevalence mental disorders (i.e. anxiety, depression) relative to the general population. Evidence regarding other mental health domains (i.e. eating disorders, substance use, stress and coping) is less consistent. These results are prefaced, however, by the outcome of the quality assessment of the included studies, which demonstrated that relatively few studies (25 %) were well reported or methodologically rigorous. Furthermore, there is a lack of intervention-based research on this topic.ConclusionThe evidence base regarding the mental health and wellbeing of elite athletes is limited by a paucity of high-quality, systematic studies. Nonetheless, the research demonstrates that this population is vulnerable to a range of mental health problems (including substance misuse), which may be related to both sporting factors (e.g. injury, overtraining and burnout) and non-sporting factors. More high-quality epidemiological and intervention studies are needed to inform optimal strategies to identify and respond to player mental health needs.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Epidemiology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e5efc1d63b414bb314778d5b5dd7404c397626e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Preliminary psychometric validation of a brief screening tool for athlete mental health among male elite athletes: the Athlete Psychological Strain Questionnaire (2019, background): “Furthermore, much of the research undertaken to date on elite athlete mental health, including psychometric validation studies, has been with non-representative samples (Rice et al., 2016).”
Athlete mental health in the Olympic/Paralympic quadrennium: a multi-societal consensus statement (2020, background): “Alongside a series of scientific reviews and commentaries (Breslin et al., 2017; Gorczynski, Coyle, & Gibson, 2017; Kuettel & Larsen, 2019, Poucher, Tamminen, Kerr & Cairney, 2019; Rice et al., 2016), the current collaboration bears witness to an increased focus on the topic of athlete mental health”
Consensus statement on improving the mental health of high performance athletes (2019, background): “First, current scales tend to measure mental illness (e.g. Gorczynski, Coyle, & Gibson, 2017; (Rice, Purcell, De Silva, Mawren, McGorry & Parker, 2016) rather than mental health.”
Mental health in elite athletes: International Olympic Committee consensus statement (2019) (2019, neutral): “at major events, and the athlete’s interpretation of pre-competitive anxiety may mediate the functional impact of symptoms.(241)”
Risk and protective factors for mental health in elite athletes: a scoping review (2019, background): “These include competitive (e.g., performance expectation), organizational (e.g., travel), and personal (e.g., family issues) stressors, that potentially increase the risk of mental illness in athletes (Rice et al., 2016).”
International society of sport psychology position stand: Athletes’ mental health, performance, and development (2017, background): “The peak age for the risk of athletes’ onset of mental disorders overlaps with the peak competitive years for elite athletes due to the intense mental and physical demands they experience (Hughes & Leavey, 2012; Rice et al., 2016).”