The psychological health of competitive athletes is of paramount importance to performance, retention, and well-being in sport, and national governing bodies are increasingly concerned with its promotion. Psychosocial Health and Well-being in High-Level Athletes offers students, researchers, and practicing sport psychologists an accessible and rigorous grounding in the manifestations of psychosocial health in athletes, the threats athletes face to their psychosocial health, and the interventions which can be designed to enhance it. Seeking to guide future research and expand professional understanding of psychosocial issues in sport, the book is based on a model of cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual health. It clearly defines these dimensions in a sporting context before discussing pertinent threats—such as career transitions, injuries and abuse—and interventions, including adversarial growth, life-skill interventions, prevention and organization policy, and mindfulness-based interventions. Providing an innovative and integrated perspective on psychosocial health and well-being in competitive sport, this book is essential reading for upper-level students taking any clincial sport psychology modules, and for sport psychologists, coaches, and administrators working with competitive athletes.
Mental health within elite sport has traditionally been ignored, but recent research has shown that competitive sport can at times seriously undermine mental health and that athletes are exposed to specific stressors that hinder their mental health optimisation. Mental Health and Well-being Interventions in Sport provides an indispensable guide for researchers and practitioners wanting to understand and implement sport-based intervention processes. This important book adopts an evidenced based approach, discussing the context of the intervention, its design and implementation, and its evaluation and legacy. With cases on depression, eating disorders, and athletic burnout, the book is designed to provide practitioners, policy makers and researchers with a cutting-edge overview of the key issues involved in this burgeoning area, while also including cases on how sport itself has been used as a method to improve mental health. Written for newcomers and established practitioners alike, the text is an essential read for researchers and practitioners in better understanding the sport setting-based intervention processes through presenting current research, theory and practice, applicable in a variety of sports settings and contexts.
Mental Health in Elite Sport: Applied Perspectives from Across the Globe provides a focused, exhaustive overview of up-to-date mental health research, models, and approaches in elite sport to provide researchers, practitioners, coaches, and students with contemporary knowledge and strategies to address mental health in elite sport across a variety of contexts. Mental Health in Elite Sport is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses globally on mental health service provision structures and cases specific to different world regions and countries. The second part focuses on specific mental health interventions across countries but also illustrates specific case studies and interventions as influenced by the local context and culture. This tour around the world offers readers an understanding of the massive global differences in mental health service provision within different situations and organizations. This is the first book of its kind in which highly experienced scholars and practitioners openly share their programs, methods, reflections, and failures on working with mental health in different contexts. By using a global, multi-contextual analysis to address mental health in elite sport, this book is an essential text for practitioners such as researchers, coaches, athletes, as well as instructors and students across the sport science and mental health fields.
Physical inactivity is a key determinant of health across the lifespan. A lack of activity increases the risk of heart disease, colon and breast cancer, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, osteoporosis, anxiety and depression and others diseases. Emerging literature has suggested that in terms of mortality, the global population health burden of physical inactivity approaches that of cigarette smoking. The prevalence and substantial disease risk associated with physical inactivity has been described as a pandemic. The prevalence, health impact, and evidence of changeability all have resulted in calls for action to increase physical activity across the lifespan. In response to the need to find ways to make physical activity a health priority for youth, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Physical Activity and Physical Education in the School Environment was formed. Its purpose was to review the current status of physical activity and physical education in the school environment, including before, during, and after school, and examine the influences of physical activity and physical education on the short and long term physical, cognitive and brain, and psychosocial health and development of children and adolescents. Educating the Student Body makes recommendations about approaches for strengthening and improving programs and policies for physical activity and physical education in the school environment. This report lays out a set of guiding principles to guide its work on these tasks. These included: recognizing the benefits of instilling life-long physical activity habits in children; the value of using systems thinking in improving physical activity and physical education in the school environment; the recognition of current disparities in opportunities and the need to achieve equity in physical activity and physical education; the importance of considering all types of school environments; the need to take into consideration the diversity of students as recommendations are developed. This report will be of interest to local and national policymakers, school officials, teachers, and the education community, researchers, professional organizations, and parents interested in physical activity, physical education, and health for school-aged children and adolescents.
This book has it all - written by national and international experts and edited by world authorities, it is the first book on sport psychiatry in over a decade. Dealing with psychopathology, mental health problems and clinical management, it differs markedly from sports psychology books that focus on performance issues. Eating disorders, exercise addiction, drug abuse are all problems that are seen in 'everyday' athletes, not just elite performers. This book shows how to help. This text covers the most important topics in contemporary sports psychiatry/psychology from an international perspective. Chapter authors are experts in the field and global leaders in the related professional organizations, including current and past Presidents/Chairs of the International Society for Sports Psychiatry and of the World Psychiatric Association Section on Exercise and Sports Psychiatry. Authors are mainly psychiatrists: the rest are PhD sport psychologists. The book comprises representative chapter authors from around the world, to an extent unprecedented in this topic. The authors and editors are well-informed in global perspectives, e.g., having served as consultants to numerous Olympic teams, in addition to service on the International Society for Sports Psychiatry's Board of Directors. Specifically, this book covers four main categories of topics: 1) mental health challenges faced by athletes (including substance use disorders, exercise addiction, eating disorders, depression, suicide, and concussion), 2) treatment approaches and therapeutic issues with athletes (including different types of psychotherapy for psychiatric disorders, psychotherapeutic performance enhancement approaches, transference and countertransference issues, achievement by proxy, psychotherapeutic issues as applied to a couple of sports that are played around the world, and use of psychiatric medications in athletes), 3) psychosocial issues affecting athletes (including sexual harassment and abuse, cultural issues, and ethics issues), and 4) the field of sports psychiatry (including work within one common sports psychiatry practice setting, and current status of and challenges in the field of sports psychiatry). There is a growing need for this book. Performance-enhancing drugs, use of psychotropics in impaired athletes, head trauma, sexual abuse, eating disorders, ethics, and depression and suicide in athletes, are just a few of the timely subjects addressed in this text. This is the only comprehensive reference available for those working in the field (or merely interested in it) to consult for current information on these topics. The existing sports psychology texts all focus on performance issues, with little, if any, attention paid to these areas of clinical significance. The book addresses the core differences between sports psychiatry and sports psychology, as well as the areas of overlap. Emphasis is placed on how the disciplines should work together in diagnosing and treating athletes dealing with emotional stress and psychopathology. Chapters include case examples and specific goals listed at the beginning, along with tables and graphs to highlight key concepts.
Health and Elite Sport is the first book to critically examine the relationship between participation in high performance sport and health outcomes. Drawing on theory and empirical data from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, developmental psychology, epidemiology, and physical education, the book explores the benefits and detriments of participation in elite sport for both individuals (athletes, coaches, spectators) and communities. Written by a team of leading international sport researchers, the book examines key issues including: Talent identification and young athletes Abuse in sport Positive youth development through sport Athlete health in periods of transition Health, sport and the family Health in professional sport The Olympics, Paralympics and public health Long term effects of participation in elite sport Highlighting the connections and contradictions between high performance sport and health, the book also discusses the clear and important implications for our socio-cultural, political and developmental understanding of sport. Health and Elite Sport is fascinating and important reading for all students and researchers with an interest in youth sport, sports development, sport policy, sports coaching, exercise and health, physical education, the sociology of sport, or the sociology of health.
Sport psychological training, an important part of athletes’ preparation, can give them the final edge in competition. This book provides a systematic structure for conducting sport psychological interventions that can be followed not only by sport psychologists, but also by athletes and coaches. The authors describe sport psychological measures that are based on scientific knowledge and have proven to be valuable in their applied work. The book is divided into two main parts. Part 1 presents the basic structure for sport psychological interventions and Part 2 focuses on concrete interventions and training measures. Part 1 further addresses the importance of personality factors for sports performance, illustrates how an athlete’s personality development can be enhanced, gives basic knowledge about diagnostic tools, and discusses talent selection. The second part of the book describes basic training, which focuses mainly on relaxation techniques, as well as skills training, essential for the stabilisation of athletic performance. Maintaining a balanced recovery-stress state is particularly important for the avoidance of overtraining. The book illustrates how athletes’ stress and recovery levels can be monitored in order to prevent overtraining. Part 2 further addresses how critical situations in an athlete’s career (including, for example, conflicts, career termination, and injuries) are to be handled, presenting various impact interventions, including clinical hypnosis. The final chapter of the book presents a mental toolbox, giving the practitioner an overview that will help to quickly identify a problem, its possible causes, and solutions.
Athletes routinely use psychological skills and interventions for performance enhancement but, perhaps surprisingly, not always to assist in recovery from injury. This book demonstrates the ways in which athletes and practitioners can transfer psychological skills to an injury and rehabilitation setting, to enhance recovery and the well-being of the athlete. Drawing on the very latest research in sport and exercise psychology, this book explores key psychological concepts relating to injury, explaining typical psychological responses to injury and psychological aspects of rehabilitation. Using case studies in every chapter to highlight the day-to-day reality of working with injured athletes, it introduces a series of practical interventions, skills and techniques, underpinned by an evidence-base, with a full explanation of how each might affect an athletee(tm)s recovery from injury. The Psychology of Sport Injury and Rehabilitation emphasises the importance of an holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to sports injury and rehabilitation. No other book examines the psychological aspects of both sports injury and the rehabilitation process, and therefore this is an essential resource for students, scholars and practitioners working in sport psychology, sports therapy, sports medicine or coaching.
