The prevalence of depressive symptoms in high-performance athletes: a systematic review

What Lies Beneath: Exploring Different Depressive Symptoms Across Selected Risk Factors in Icelandic Team Sport Athletes

“…There is now an empirically grounded consensus that athletes are a unique population challenged by a range of generic and sport-specific stressors (Küttel & Larsen, 2019;Reardon et al, 2019;Wolanin et al, 2015) and that prevalence rates of depressive symptoms in athletes may be comparable with those observed in the general population (Gorczynski et al, 2017;Junge & Feddermann-Demont, 2016;Nixdorf, Hautzinger, & Beckmann, 2013;Wolanin, Hong, Marks, Panchoo, & Gross, 2016). As reported in a recent review by Golding et al (2020), depressive symptom prevalence has ranged from 6.7% to 34.0% across athlete samples, and several demographic risk factors such as sex, level of competition, and type of sport have been linked with elevated depressive symptoms in this population. Similar to research on normative sex differences (Breslau et al, 2017;Hankin et al, 1998), female athletes have been shown to report higher levels of depressive symptoms than male athletes (Gorczynski et al, 2017;Wolanin et al, 2015).…”

“…Within the past decade, depression-related research in athletes has aimed at establishing an improved understanding of athletes' susceptibility to depression and depressive symptoms (Golding, Gillingham, & Perera, 2020;Gorczynski, Coyle, & Gibson, 2017;Wolanin, Gross, & Hong, 2015). There is now an empirically grounded consensus that athletes are a unique population challenged by a range of generic and sport-specific stressors (Küttel & Larsen, 2019;Reardon et al, 2019;Wolanin et al, 2015) and that prevalence rates of depressive symptoms in athletes may be comparable with those observed in the general population (Gorczynski et al, 2017;Junge & Feddermann-Demont, 2016;Nixdorf, Hautzinger, & Beckmann, 2013;Wolanin, Hong, Marks, Panchoo, & Gross, 2016).…”

“…Nixdorf et al, 2013;Tahtinen et al, 2020;Wolanin et al, 2016), samples have often consisted of a relatively small number of athletes across different sports, and therefore, comparisons have tended to focus on differences between broader sport categories, such as team and individual sports (e.g., Beable et al, 2017;Nixdorf et al, 2013). Consequently, to better understand potential sport-specific differences, scholars have underlined that future studies should aim to include larger samples across specific sports (Golding et al, 2020;Junge & Feddermann-Demont, 2016;Junge & Prinz, 2019;Nixdorf et al, 2013;Wolanin et al, 2016).…”

“…Although the evidence based on various depression-related topics in athletes has been growing rapidly, less attention has, however, been paid to the heterogeneous subset of symptoms that underlie the construct of depression itself (Ringland, 2016;Schuch, 2015) and the potential implications this heterogeneity may have on the interpretation and dissemination of research findings (Golding et al, 2020;Schuch, 2015). Therefore, we will briefly discuss the definition and assessment of depression and how the current study aims to address these issues.…”

Ending an Elite Sports Career: Case Report of Behavioral Activation Applied as an Evidence-Based Intervention With a Former Olympic Athlete Developing Depression

“…Also in the sport psychology literature, the association between various challenging phases or situations during the elite sports career (e.g., career transitions, injuries, life stress, performance setbacks or failures, post-Olympic experiences, stressors in the team or sports organization) and psychological symptoms linked to a depressive mood have been acknowledged (e.g., Beable, Fulcher, Lee, & Hamilton, 2017;Doherty et al, 2016;Howells & Lucassen, 2018;Lebrun et al, 2018;Lundqvist & Gustafsson, 2020;Nixdorf, Frank, & Beckmann, 2015;Ströhle, 2019;Wolani, Gross, & Hong, 2015). Golding, Gillingham, and Perera (2020) found that the prevalence rates varied from 7% to 34% across studies investigating depressive symptoms among elite athletes. The prevalence of self-reported symptoms associated with anxiety and depression among former elite athletes has been estimated to 26% (Gouttebarge et al, 2019).…”