SHARPSports mental Health Awareness Research Project: Prevalence and risk factors of depressive symptoms and life stress in elite athletes.

Elite coaches have a similar prevalence of depressive symptoms to the general population and lower rates than elite athletes

“…Perhaps reflecting this, elite athletes report similar types of life stress, but more frequently, than coaches when given the same survey. 2 As previously observed in elite athlete populations, 2 19 we observed in coaches a positive association between clinically relevant depressive symptoms and retirement plans. The relatively small sample size is an important limitation of this study (largely due to the small number of elite-level coaches in New Zealand) and as a result statistical power and potential to perform subgroup analyses was limited.…”

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study exploring the prevalence of depressive symptoms and daily hassles in coaches of elite athletes. The 14% prevalence of clinically relevant depressive symptoms we observed in this coach population is comparable to the rates of clinically diagnosed anxiety and depression in the New Zealand adult population, 3 but lower than reported symptom rates among elite athletes based in New Zealand (21%) 2 and Australia (20%). 14 There may be a number of explanations for this difference.…”

“…Ninety per cent of the coaches in this sample were older than 30 years of age, compared with 17% of athletes. 2 Older adults have been shown to have a higher 'sense of coherence' and 'self-esteem' and lower overall rates of depression and distress. 15 The observed difference could relate to a coaching selection bias.…”

“…A recent meta-analysis illustrated the prevalence of symptoms of depression and anxiety in elite athletes to be as high as 34%. 1 In New Zealand elite athletes were found to have a prevalence of 21% for depressive symptoms 2 while 14% of the adult population has been diagnosed with depression in their lifetime. 3 An international professional rugby study, which included New Zealand players, found the prevalence for depressive and anxiety symptoms to be 28%.…”

Elite Athletes Coping With Depression: A Qualitative Study

“…This lack of emphasis is somewhat surprising given that MHIs in elite athletes have attracted considerable attention in recent years (Gouttebarge, Backx, Aoki, & Kerkhoffs, 2015;Reardon & Factor, 2010;Rice et al, 2016;Schaal et al, 2011) and that depression, in particular, is a common societal concern that affects both the general and sporting population (Doherty, Hannigan, & Campbell, 2016;Lebrun, MacNamara, Rodgers, & Collins, 2018;WHO, 2018). Although the prevalence of depression amongst elite athletes remains unclear (Beable, Fulcher, Lee, & Hamilton, 2017;Reardon & Factor, 2010;Rice et al, 2016) and is often underestimated (Hammond, Gialloreto, Kubas, & Davis, 2013), the occurrence of depressive symptoms is currently thought to be comparable to (Beable et al, 2017;Gulliver, Griffiths, Mackinnon, Batterham, & Stanimirovic, 2015), or greater (Roberts, Faull, & Tod, 2016) than the general population.…”