Effectiveness of psychological intervention following sport injury

Abstract

With increasing attention given to the development and implementation of psychological interventions during the sport injury rehabilitation process, there is a need to document the effectiveness of these interventions. The purpose of this review was to summarize the empirical findings of the effects of psychological interventions in reducing post-injury psychological consequences and improving psychological coping during the injury rehabilitation process among competitive and recreational athletes. In February 2012, utilizing a comprehensive search strategy, we conducted electronic searches of multiple electronic databases for randomized and nonrandomized control trials that evaluated interventions targeting populations of injured competitive and recreational athletes age 17 years and older. We included interventions that directly intervene on injured athletes' psychological outcomes (e.g., psychological consequences, psychological coping and re-injury anxiety) and utilized psychological strategies including imagery, goal-setting, relaxation, and other common techniques during the post-injury rehabilitation period. Six studies, described in seven peer-reviewed published articles, met study inclusion criteria and were included in this review. Of those studies, two included randomized control trials, two used before and after study designs and two were case study designs. Two interventions utilized guided imagery and relaxation, two interventions utilized goal-setting and one each utilized microcounseling, written disclosure, and acceptance and commitment therapy. Guided imagery/relaxation was shown to be associated with improved psychological coping and reduced re-injury anxiety. Goal setting, however, was not directly associated with the reduction of negative psychological consequences. Other psychological techniques such as microcounseling skills, acceptance and commitment therapy, and written disclosure have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing negative psychological consequences, improving psychological coping, and reducing re-injury anxiety. Our findings suggest a significant need to develop and implement well-designed intervention studies that target improvement of post-injury psychological outcomes in order to assist injured athletes successfully recovery from sport injury.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 131 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.