Do Rates of Mental Health Symptoms in Currently Competing Elite Athletes in Paralympic Sports Differ from Non-Para-Athletes?

LISA S. OLIVE · Simon Rice · Matt Butterworth · Matti Clements · Rosemary Purcell

36 citations0/0 files storedSports Medicine - Open

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Sport Psychology and Performance COVID-19 and Mental Health Psychological Treatments and Assessments

Abstract

BACKGROUND: This study addresses the lack of comparative data on the mental health of athletes in Paralympic sports ('para-athletes') and non-para athletes by examining the prevalence and correlates of mental health symptoms in a national sample of elite athletes representative of the population from which it was drawn on age and para-status. METHODS: A cross-sectional, anonymous, online-survey was provided to all categorised (e.g. highest level) athletes, aged 17 years and older, registered with the Australian Institute of Sport (n = 1566). Measures included psychological distress, mental health caseness, risky alcohol consumption, body weight and shape dissatisfaction, self-esteem, life satisfaction, and problem gambling. Correlates of outcomes included individual (e.g. demographic and psychosocial) and sport-related variables. RESULTS: The participation rate was 51.7% (n = 810), with valid data available from 749 athletes. No significant differences were observed between athletes from para- and non-para-sports on most mental health symptoms, with the exception of alcohol consumption (p < .001) and self-esteem (p = .007), both lower in athletes from para-sports. A trend for an interaction was found for anxiety and insomnia (p = .018), whereby the difference between athletes from para- and non-para-sports was qualified by gender. CONCLUSIONS: In a large sample of elite athletes, mental health and wellbeing symptoms are comparable between athletes from para- and non-para-sports, with the exception of para-athletes reporting lower alcohol consumption but also lower self-esteem. While overall mental health and wellbeing symptom profiles are largely similar, attention to areas of differences will help to better address the unmet and distinct mental health needs of athletes from para-sports.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

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

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 36 citations exist upstream.

References

1985The Satisfaction With Life Scale 1965Society and the Adolescent Self-Image 2002Short screening scales to monitor population prevalences and trends in non-specific psychological distress 1979A scaled version of the General Health Questionnaire 1997The validity of two versions of the GHQ in the WHO study of mental illness in general health care 1981The role of coping responses and social resources in attenuating the stress of life events 2019Mental health in elite athletes: International Olympic Committee consensus statement (2019)2009Internal construct validity of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS): a Rasch analysis using data from the Scottish Health Education Population Survey

Explore the map →

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

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.