Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation

Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation

Psychological and psychosocial factors play a significant role in influencing sports injuries. The stress-injury model highlights the impact of distress (negative stress) and eustress (positive stress) on injury occurrence. Athletes have the ability to transform distress into eustress through mental manipulations, perceiving challenging events as motivating for personal growth. Football injuries are linked to team performance, with team chemistry developing when players have longer periods of playing together. Personal resources, such as personality traits and history of stressors, also affect injury susceptibility. Coping resources, including social support, are crucial predictors. Long-term interventions are recommended to improve social support, address negative life events, and shift distress to eustress, with the goal of preventing injuries and improving injury severity.

Authors of this review:

Nikita Goncharenko

Date of Publication:

23/07/2023

Academic Reference:

Clinical Issues (by Bert De Cuyper, 2017)

Tags:sports psychology

Key Ideas

Athletes can turn "distress" into "eustress" through mental manipulations. Practical example: that means any person may wish to see stressful events within a work context, as challenging and motivating to self-develop.

Injuries in football correlate with the team’s results. Chemistry in a team stays when team members play together longer than the opponents’ teams.

Resources: personality, history of stressors, coping resources. Coping resources is the most valuable predictor

History of stressors: life events, daily hassles & previous injury history.

Life events: The risk of the injury increased in direct relationship to the level of high stress in certain events in life.

Surprisingly, positive life events lead to a higher chance of severe injury.

Personality: (1) locus of control: personal control over the life and environment; (2) psychological hardiness: a constellation of characteristics (curiosity, willingness to commit, seeing change as a challenge, a stimulus to develop) (3) sense of coherence: the feeling of belongingness; (4) Achievement motivation: a need to succeed; a need to avoid failure; (5) Competitive trait anxiety: perceive situations as threatening (react with anxiety response).

The positive state of mind might buffer the negative effects (distress situations)

Examples of negative states of mind can include (1) defensive pessimism, (2) perfectionism, (3) low social support, (4) negative athletic identity.

Social support can be “High”: protective; and can be “Low”: exacerbate deleterious effects on the vulnerability of injury;

Interventions are long-term programs to improve (Low social support; negative life events; greater peripheral narration during stress; something else) with the idea of changing distress into eustress.

Future most-exciting avenue: interventions to prevent injuries/improve the severity of injury situation.

Citations

Stress-injury model: stress/distress/eustress.

"Distress (negative): over-challenging by a combination of importance and yet no resources to cope".

"Eustress (positive): challenging, exciting, and fun;"

"PLE (Positive Life Events)"

"NLE (Negative Life Events)"

"TLE (Total Live Events)"

"OL (Objective Loss)"

External References

Williams, J. and Andersen, M. (2007). Psychosocial antecedents of sport injury and interventions for risk reduction. In Tenenbaum G., and Eklund R. (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (3rd ed.). New York: John Wiley and Sons. p. 379-403.

Brewer, B. (2007). Psychology of sport injury rehabilitation. In Tenenbaum G., Eklund R. (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (3rd ed.). New York: John Wiley and Sons. p. 404-424.