New Study Explores Mental Health Impact Of Sports Injuries

sports injuries

When you’re very active and love playing sport, it can be incredibly distressing to sustain an injury of some kind. Being in pain, feeling restricted and not feeling physically strong and capable can be very frustrating, particularly if the road to recovery is long and filled with months of rehab work.

As hard as it can be physically, sports injuries can also take their toll on your mental health, a topic that is now being explored in a new collaborative study between Podium Analytics and the University of Bath, looking the psychological impacts of injury on young people and how they relate to sport and home environments, as well as whether they’re risk factors for more significant mental health conditions.

Early work for the Young Voices in Sport study found that there is a need for social, emotional and psychological support following a sports injury, with guidance welcome from families, coaches and peers to help with challenges such as loss of identity, anxiety and the pressure to get back to playing before full recovery.

As part of this latest stage of the research project, students from Bath University spoke to BBC News about the mental health impact of their injuries.

Gemma Peters, 20 years old and an elite rower with the British Rowing South West Performance Development Academy, explained how she’d hurt her back while training and consequently went through two years of rehab and relapse, including hospital stays and temporary loss of feeling in her legs.

She said: “I’ve been a high-level athlete all my life, so when injury took that away, I didn’t know how to handle it. It took me the best part of a year to learn how to live life no longer being an elite athlete.”

The study findings will help support the development of resources and learning tools, ensuring that young people’s experiences reflect typical psychological responses to injury, instead of unusual cases, as well as providing insight into whether injuries are risk factors for sports dropouts and mental health conditions.