Psychological predictors of injury among elite athletes

Abstract

Objectives: To establish injury rates among a population of elite athletes, to provide normative data for psychological variables hypothesised to be predictive of sport injuries, and to establish relations between measures of mood, perceived life stress, and injury characteristics as a precursor to introducing a psychological intervention to ameliorate the injury problem. Methods: As part of annual screening procedures, athletes at the Queensland Academy of Sport report medical and psychological status. Data from 845 screenings (433 female and 412 male athletes) were reviewed. Population specific tables of normative data were established for the Brunel mood scale and the perceived stress scale. Results: About 67% of athletes were injured each year, and about 18% were injured at the time of screening. Fifty percent of variance in stress scores could be predicted from mood scores, especially for vigour, depression, and tension. Mood and stress scores collectively had significant utility in predicting injury characteristics. Injury status (current, healed, no injury) was correctly classified with 39% accuracy, and back pain with 48% accuracy. Among a subset of 233 uninjured athletes (116 female and 117 male), five mood dimensions (anger, confusion, fatigue, tension, depression) were significantly related to orthopaedic incidents over the preceding 12 months, with each mood dimension explaining 6-7% of the variance. No sex differences in these relations were found. Conclusions: The findings support suggestions that psychological measures have utility in predicting athletic injury, although the relatively modest explained variance highlights the need to also include underlying physiological indicators of allostatic load, such as stress hormones, in predictive models. R isk of injury in sport and psychological factors that influence injury rehabilitation are well documented. 1-3Knowledge of psychological predictors of injury in elite sport is far from comprehensive, and findings to date have been somewhat contradictory. A stress and sport injury model originally proposed by Andersen and Williams 4 5 was recently extended by Petrie and Perna. 6 The model posits that the effects of psychological risk factors on injuries and other adverse sport related health outcomes are mediated by the cumulative effect of acute and/or chronic physiological stress responses. A substantial body of research consistently supports the relations between injury and psychometric indices of stressful life events in specific athletic populations, although the directly explained variances are often modest. 5The relation between psychometric and physiological stress level indicators and injury outcomes has not been formally investigated in elite sports, although a recent study on 40 collegiate rowers who received cognitive-behavioural stress management training found that it halved injury/illness incidence, with an even greater reduction in lost training time and corresponding negative affect and baseline cortisol concentration reductions.7 Despi...

The Detrimental Effects of Allostasis: Allostatic Load as a Measure of Cumulative Stress

“…As in the case of children (Evans, 2003) parental education was correlated with AL (as determined by risk cumulative risk scores). Finally, Galambos (2005), like Angeli et al (2004), looked at AL in athletes, however, they focused on psychological predictors of injury, suggesting that AL may be the cause behind them.…”

“…AL can be applied to adulthood as part of life history approaches and is being reported more frequently in anthropological settings. One could look at younger adults (students) (Gaab et al, 2003; Lawyer and Younger, 2003) or athletic adults (Galambos et al, 2005) and compare their AL scores to disparate groups (e.g., Crews, 2003a, b;Crews 2004). Cultural factors, such as stress mediation strategies, may reduce AL or while psychological ones may increase injury risks.…”

The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Life Stress in Student-Athletes: The Mediating Role of Coping Effectiveness and Decision Rumination

“…Student-athletes are typically developing young adults, but in addition to the education and daily life demands shared by their nonathletic student peers, they have to deal with a range of weighty demands from their involvement in sport (e.g., training, selection, matches, and travel). Indeed, studies have highlighted that student-athletes express concerns about their academic skills, timemanagement, emotional adjustments, interpersonal relationships and professional development or career searching, as well as difficulties with alcohol use and substance abuse, attributed to the pressure of balancing scholastic, personal and sport demands (Brown et al 2015;Galambos, Terry, Moyle, & Locke, 2005;Johnson & Ivarsson, 2011). Hence, it seems crucial to investigate protective factors of stress among this population.…”

Association between mood states and performance of Brazilian elite sailors: Winners vs. non-winners

“…Depression: This variable represents a depressive state, in which personal inadequacy is felt, indicative of depressive mood rather than clinical depression (Galambos, Terry, Moyle, & Locke, 2005). Among its features there are feelings such as negative self-esteem, emotional isolation, sadness, difficulty of adaptation, depreciation or negative self-image (Beck & Clark, 1988;Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) and despair (Schinka, Velicer, & Weiner, 2003).…”