The Psychological Impact of Injury on Athletes

2839 Words6 Pages

Due to the nature of sport, athletes will always be faced with the possibility of becoming injured. Empirical research has demonstrated that injury has a psychological impact on athletes (Quinn & Fallon, 1999). Indeed, sports practitioners often witness negative psychological impacts such as depression and in extreme cases suicidal tendencies in the injured athlete (Jevon & Johnston, 2003). Injuries have a dramatic impact upon an athlete’s life (Deutsch, 1985), Crossman (1997) interviewed athletic trainers and established that 47% of respondents believed that every injured athlete suffered psychological trauma. Walker, Thatcher and Lavallee (2007), explain there is a need to advance current knowledge of the way injured athletes psychologically respond, with deeper understanding it would be possible to aid rehabilitation professionals and help the athlete cope better psychologically. Psychological issues have an important role in the athletes ability to recover from injury (Arvinen-Barrow, Penny, Hemmings, & Corr, 2010), understanding how an athlete responds will have multiple practical implications. Ford and Gordon (1997) suggest that if an athlete experiences negative emotions then it will lead to non-complinace of the rehabilitation process. In order to understand athletes psychological responses to injury several frameworks have been suggested. These include the: integrated model of response to sports injury and rehabilitation (Wiese-Bjornstal, Smith, Shaffer, & Morrey, 1998), the Bio-Psychosocial model of sport injury rehabilitation (Brewer, Andersen, & Van Raalte, 2002), the staged-based grief response models (Kubler-Ross, 1969) and the stage model of the return to sport (Taylor & Taylor, 1997).
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...ning of Sports injury and re-injury anxiety assessment and intervention.
Walker, N., Thatcher, J., & Lavallee, D. (2007). Psychological responses to injury in competitive sport: a critical review. The Journal of The Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 174-180.
Wiese-Bjornstal, D. M. (2010). Psychology and socioculture affect injury risk, response, and recovery in high intensity athletes: a consensus statement. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Sciences in Sports, 103-111.
Wiese-Bjornstal, D. M., Smith, A. M., & LaMott, E. E. (1995). A model of psychological response to athletic injury and rehabilitation. Athletic training: Sport health care perspectives, 17-30.
Wiese-Bjornstal, D. M., Smith, A. M., Shaffer, S. M., & Morrey, M. A. (1998). An intergrated model of resonse to athletic injury and rehabilitation. Journal of Applied Sports Psychology, 10, 46-69.

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