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Mental Health in Athletes: Where Are the Treatment Studies?

In recent years, athletes’ mental health has gained interest among researchers, sport practitioners, and the media. However, the field of sport psychology lacks empirical evidence on the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for mental health problems and disorders in athletes. Thus far,...

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Autores principales: Ekelund, Rebecka, Holmström, Stefan, Stenling, Andreas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9289539/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35859831
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.781177
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author Ekelund, Rebecka
Holmström, Stefan
Stenling, Andreas
author_facet Ekelund, Rebecka
Holmström, Stefan
Stenling, Andreas
author_sort Ekelund, Rebecka
collection PubMed
description In recent years, athletes’ mental health has gained interest among researchers, sport practitioners, and the media. However, the field of sport psychology lacks empirical evidence on the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for mental health problems and disorders in athletes. Thus far, intervention research in sport psychology has mainly focused on performance enhancement using between-subject designs and healthy athlete samples. In the current paper, we highlight three interrelated key issues in relation to treating mental health problems and disorders in athletes. (i) How are mental health and mental health problems and disorders defined in the sport psychology literature? (ii) How are prevalence rates of mental health problems and disorders in athletes determined? (iii) What is known about psychotherapeutic interventions for mental health problems and disorders in athletes? We conclude that the reliance on different definitions and assessments of mental health problems and disorders contributes to heterogeneous prevalence rates. In turn, this limits our understanding of the extent of mental health problems and disorders in athletes. Furthermore, knowledge of the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for athletes with mental health problems and disorders is scarce. Future research should include athletes with established mental health problems and disorders in intervention studies. We also propose an increased use of N-of-1 trials to enhance the knowledge of effective psychotherapeutic interventions in this population.
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spelling pubmed-92895392022-07-19 Mental Health in Athletes: Where Are the Treatment Studies? Ekelund, Rebecka Holmström, Stefan Stenling, Andreas Front Psychol Psychology In recent years, athletes’ mental health has gained interest among researchers, sport practitioners, and the media. However, the field of sport psychology lacks empirical evidence on the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for mental health problems and disorders in athletes. Thus far, intervention research in sport psychology has mainly focused on performance enhancement using between-subject designs and healthy athlete samples. In the current paper, we highlight three interrelated key issues in relation to treating mental health problems and disorders in athletes. (i) How are mental health and mental health problems and disorders defined in the sport psychology literature? (ii) How are prevalence rates of mental health problems and disorders in athletes determined? (iii) What is known about psychotherapeutic interventions for mental health problems and disorders in athletes? We conclude that the reliance on different definitions and assessments of mental health problems and disorders contributes to heterogeneous prevalence rates. In turn, this limits our understanding of the extent of mental health problems and disorders in athletes. Furthermore, knowledge of the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for athletes with mental health problems and disorders is scarce. Future research should include athletes with established mental health problems and disorders in intervention studies. We also propose an increased use of N-of-1 trials to enhance the knowledge of effective psychotherapeutic interventions in this population. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-07-04 /pmc/articles/PMC9289539/ /pubmed/35859831 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.781177 Text en Copyright © 2022 Ekelund, Holmström and Stenling. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Ekelund, Rebecka
Holmström, Stefan
Stenling, Andreas
Mental Health in Athletes: Where Are the Treatment Studies?
title Mental Health in Athletes: Where Are the Treatment Studies?
title_full Mental Health in Athletes: Where Are the Treatment Studies?
title_fullStr Mental Health in Athletes: Where Are the Treatment Studies?
title_full_unstemmed Mental Health in Athletes: Where Are the Treatment Studies?
title_short Mental Health in Athletes: Where Are the Treatment Studies?
title_sort mental health in athletes: where are the treatment studies?
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9289539/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35859831
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.781177
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