The Affiliation of Sport Specialization and Concussion Historical past on Self-Reported Depressive Signs and High quality of Life Amongst Excessive Faculty Athletes.
Chou TY, Biese Ok, Leung W, Bell D, Kaminski T, McGuine T. [published online ahead of print, 2022 Nov 11]. Clin J Sport Med. 2022; doi:10.1097/JSM.0000000000001092
Take-Residence Message
Sport specialization in highschool student-athletes might enhance depressive signs and cut back high quality of life. Concussion historical past could also be unrelated to psychological well being on this inhabitants.
Background
As sports activities participation will increase, so does sport specialization and sports-related concussions. Adversarial psychosocial outcomes related to these elements embrace burnout, despair, and lowered high quality of life. Though printed research recommend concussion and sports activities specialization might relate to adversarial psychological well being outcomes, no research exist addressing student-athletes with each of those danger elements. Â
Examine Objective
The researchers aimed to find out if sport specialization and concussion historical past relate to depressive signs and high quality of life in highschool student-athletes.
Strategies
The authors recruited student-athletes from 31 excessive faculties in Wisconsin through the 2016-2018 college years. All individuals met the inclusion standards by collaborating in interscholastic sports activities, enrolling in grades 9-12, and being medically eligible to take part in sports activities on the day of research recruitment. After assembly these standards and consenting to take part, researchers collected participant demographic information, together with concussion and sports activities historical past (single- or multi-sport participation). Athletic Trainers validated the knowledge supplied by the participant. Researchers used The Affected person Well being Questionnaire-9 to gather information associated to depressive signs and the Pediatric High quality of Life 4.0 Scale to evaluate participant high quality of life.
Outcomes
Of the two,453 athletes, 19% reported a earlier concussion, and 57% specialised in a sport. Athletes who participated in just one sport reported extra depressive signs and decrease high quality of life than their multi-sport counterparts. Particularly, single-sport athletes had 50% higher odds of reporting increased despair scores than multi-sport highschool student-athletes. Sport-related concussion historical past was unrelated to depressive signs and high quality of life.
Viewpoints
This analysis provides to the rising physique of literature suggesting sport specialization might result in destructive psychological well being outcomes for student-athletes. This relationship might clarify the elevated psychological well being considerations in athletic populations over the previous a number of years. This research additionally provides to the literature that concussion historical past is unrelated to psychological well being circumstances amongst non-elite athletes. Nonetheless, this isn’t meant to downplay that some sufferers might expertise depressive signs after a concussion and that we should always fastidiously monitor all sufferers after an damage for psychological well-being. This research will not be with out limitations. The authors relied on sufferers to recall prior concussion historical past, which introduces considerations concerning the accuracy of somebody’s recall. The cross-sectional nature of this research additionally limits the authors’ potential to find out whether or not sport specialization (enjoying a single sport) causes adversarial psychological well being and quality-of-life outcomes or whether or not depressive signs make an athlete much less more likely to take part in a number of sports activities.
Medical Implications
Sports activities medication professionals ought to advocate for various sports activities experiences for youth, adolescent, and teenage athletes whereas making certain preparedness to deal with psychological well being considerations on this inhabitants. Moreover, these professionals ought to keep away from suggesting that sport-related concussions result in psychological well being penalties, together with despair.
Questions for Dialogue
What are your experiences with sport-specialization athletics and psychological well being? How do you deal with sport specialization in athletics? How does this research change your views relating to sport specialization and concussions in athletics?
Associated Posts
- We Have to Break the Stigma of In search of Psychological Well being Providers amongst Scholar-Athletes
- Mother and Dad Say Specialization is Necessary
- Enjoying Excessive Faculty Soccer Might Not Result in Impaired Cognition or Despair
Written by: Cade Watts
Reviewed by: Jeffrey Driban
