Review: Psychological responses to injury in competitive sport: a critical review

Abstract

Research has attempted to examine the psychological impact of athletic injury to assist rehabilitation personnel when treating injured athletes. Sports trainers, sports therapists, physiotherapists, medical staff and sports psychologists should be aware of psychological factors impacting on the injury experience when involved in an athlete's rehabilitation. A number of models have been proposed as useful frameworks for investigating and describing the psychological response to athletic injury. Many researchers have relied upon applying or adapting grief and cognitive appraisal models originally derived from the clinical and stress related psychology literature in an attempt to describe the psychological response to athletic injury. This article provides an overview of these models and offers a critical appraisal of this research, specifically focusing on the grief response models and the integrated model of response to sport injury and rehabilitation. Criticisms focus on the lack of research supporting a uniformed sequence of stages as a feature of response to athletic injury. Further grief criticisms centre on the absence of denial in much of the research to date. The article then focuses on the dynamic core of the integrated response to sport injury and rehabilitation model. It is argued that the interrelationships between emotional responses, behavioural responses, cognitive appraisals and recovery outcomes are not as simple as suggested in the model.

Narratives of Psychosocial Response to Microtrauma Injury among Long-Distance Runners

“…In general, findings from the current study add support to the integrated model of psychological response to sport injury [3] and to other previous research findings that athletes incurring sport injuries experience not only the physical consequences of an injury, but also the psychosocial responses surrounding the sport injury [12,[21][22][23]. Findings from the current study provide evidence for a need to study the role of injury type to better understand the psychosocial responses across the time course of the injury process [3].…”

Collegiate athletes’ experience of the meaning of sport injury: A phenomenological investigation

“…Although previous research has revealed a number of positive outcomes of sport injury, 6,7,13 it has not indicated that the experience of injury can be therapeutic in and of itself. 15 However, the present findings suggest that for some of these athletes, the acceptance of a higher meaning to their injury experience may have been therapeutic.…”

“…The present study represented an attempt to extend the work of Walker et al 14,15 by further exploring the possible meaning athletes derive from their injury experience. To accomplish this task we employed an interview technique based on the philosophical tenets of phenomenology.…”

Role of Sport Medicine Professionals in Addressing Psychosocial Aspects of Sport-Injury Rehabilitation: Professional Athletes' Views

“…Clear evidence in the literature 78,79 indicates that an injured athlete's emotional responses can affect subsequent behavior and self-regulatory capacity during rehabilitation. For example, feelings of self-doubt may limit the motivation or self-regulation needed to engage in rehabilitation activities as planned.…”