Every athlete at some time during their athletic career has experienced a physical injury that holds them back from partaking in the sport that they love, if it's from practice or competitive play it's a thing every athlete in the world wishes they could prevent. Even if you have been fortunate enough to train without a critical injury, all things considered, you know somebody who has had a physical injury that requires quite some time of professional rehabilitation before they can get back to training. These injuries and rehabilitation are regularly joined by abiding mental consequences, affecting the competitors' prosperity just as their probability of getting back to the sport. An anticipated result indicated that athletes with a high internal locus of control tend to recover faster than others. There is a fine line between being psychologically ready to return to a sport and being physically cleared for athletes with injuries. Some individuals possess specific personality traits that can forecast one's rate of psychological and physical recovery from an injury. This paper will elucidate the correlation between injuries' effect on mental health and the psychological health of an athlete.  When athletes at any level face an injury, it puts them in a dilemma on how to face adversity; the athlete either chooses to overcome and grow or fold and eventually wash out of the sport.  When one experiences an injury, there is a tendency that the athlete will have more of a negative than positive impact on one's psyche. Athletes have tended to use various negative terms (e.g., anger, bitterness, confusion, depression, fear, frustration, helplessness, shock) to characterize their emotions after injury (W. Brewer, 2017). Evidence shows that athletes who report higher levels of emotional disturbance after sustaining an injury than before being injured and that athletes with injury tend to report higher levels of emotional disturbance than athletes without injury (M. Rice, 2016).  Relationship Between Stress and Injury Stress is a broad term; many underlying factors come into play, such as anxiety and depression. Furthermore, when stress (psychological, academic, training, or performance-related) overloads an athlete's stress-coping ability, the susceptibility to performance decrement increases, as does the risk of injury and illness (J. Hamlin, 2019).  Those who have a high-stress factor in their life are more likely to be prone to injury. When looking at stress-based injuries, there are two factors: muscle tension and attentional disruption. Attentional changes may include increased muscle tension, narrowing of the visual field, and increased distractibility, which may have a negative impact on the stress-injury response (L. Lavallee, 2019). A notable example to best relate to is Anderson and Williams  stress injury model. According to this model, personality, coping resources, and history of stress have impacted competitors’ reaction to distressing at ...

1. Every athlete at some time during their athletic career has
experienced a physical injury that holds them back from
partaking in the sport that they love, if it's from practice or
competitive play it's a thing every athlete in the world wishes
they could prevent. Even if you have been fortunate enough to
train without a critical injury, all things considered, you know
somebody who has had a physical injury that requires quite
some time of professional rehabilitation before they can get
back to training. These injuries and rehabilitation are regularly
joined by abiding mental consequences, affecting the
competitors' prosperity just as their probability of getting back
to the sport. An anticipated result indicated that athletes with a
high internal locus of control tend to recover faster than others.
There is a fine line between being psychologically ready to
return to a sport and being physically cleared for athletes with
injuries. Some individuals possess specific personality traits
that can forecast one's rate of psychological and physical
recovery from an injury. This paper will elucidate the
correlation between injuries' effect on mental health and the
psychological health of an athlete.
When athletes at any level face an injury, it puts them in a
dilemma on how to face adversity; the athlete either chooses to
overcome and grow or fold and eventually wash out of the
sport. When one experiences an injury, there is a tendency that
the athlete will have more of a negative than positive impact on
one's psyche. Athletes have tended to use various negative
terms (e.g., anger, bitterness, confusion, depression, fear,
frustration, helplessness, shock) to characterize their emotions
after injury (W. Brewer, 2017). Evidence shows that athletes
who report higher levels of emotional disturbance after
sustaining an injury than before being injured and that athletes
with injury tend to report higher levels of emotional disturbance
than athletes without injury (M. Rice, 2016).

2. Relationship Between Stress and Injury
Stress is a broad term; many underlying factors come into play,
such as anxiety and depression. Furthermore, when stress
(psychological, academic, training, or performance-related)
overloads an athlete's stress-coping ability, the susceptibility to
performance decrement increases, as does the risk of injury and
illness (J. Hamlin, 2019). Those who have a high-stress factor
in their life are more likely to be prone to injury. When looking
at stress-based injuries, there are two factors: muscle tension
and attentional disruption. Attentional changes may include
increased muscle tension, narrowing of the visual field, and
increased distractibility, which may have a negative impact on
the stress-injury response (L. Lavallee, 2019). A notable
example to best relate to is Anderson and Williams stress
injury model. According to this model, personality, coping
resources, and history of stress have impacted competitors’
reaction to distressing athletic situations that, thus impacts the
likelihood of athletic injury through different stress-response
methods. As well as proposing psychological risk factors, the
Anderson and Williams model offered explicit pathways for
skills training and psychological interventions to support
unfavorable pressure related ramifications for competitors'
wellbeing and to limit, or ideally prevent athletic injury.
Overtraining Syndrome
Emotional Responses to Injury
As we look into the effects of injuries on the mental and
psychological health of athletes, there are more negative
responses found than positive ones as injury tends to be a
stressful thing. Shelly Sheinbein found that some psychological
effects of injury include reinjury anxiety, psychological
distress, and the stress of rehabilitation. Her findings were in
accordance with Aditi Mankad of the Journal of Clinical Sport
Psychology; there are many emotional responses that athletes
tend to experience during rehab of their injuries. Mankad’s

3. study features a psycholinguistic analysis of an athlete's
experience in recovering from injury through three 20-minute
writing sessions, which promoted disclosure of emotions
associated with injury and rehabilitation. When an athlete is
dealing with injury their head tends to fill with negative
thoughts and when their levels of stress, mood disturbance, and
self-esteem were measured research shows a decrease in all of
them. These athletes tend to deal with anger, bitterness,
confusion, depression and fear all factors which feed stress as
we discussed earlier. As we found more negative impacts than
positive ones we have to work with players to stay happy and
positive through times of adversity like injuries but first we
must understand the negative impacts an athlete experiences
during injury and why it happens.
- relief ?? Bad season, players who are playing hurt get to rest
Negative Impacts Injuries have on players of all sports
As athletes deal with their injuries research shows that
many tend to deal with depression/ and high stress levels. Not
being able to partake in the activity that you train hard for and
have loved since you started and compete affects many athletes
negatively. They don’t get to spend time with their teammates
and friends so they feel left out or not part of the team. Injuries
are a hard thing to process, even the rehabilitation of an injury
is a hard process as it is usually painful and will test the
persistence of most people. From short term to long term all of
these are factors that take a toll on a student athlete, after being
at school all day, playing a sport was the one thing that took
their mind off the struggles of everyday life and without being
able to participate will bring their mental state way down.
David Filan found when studying the long term mental and
physical health of athletes dealing with a chronic hip injury that
these athletes had a significant negative effect on the physical
and mental well-being of athletes. Even if an athlete “receives
corrective surgery, that may restore their physical function but

4. is more limited in its ability to improve mental health status in
this athletic cohort.” This brings in another negative impact that
an injury could have on a player which would be on their
confidence.
A player's self-esteem levels tend to be high when a player is in
good form, playing well in games at practice, connecting with
the team and coach but when you're injured you don’t get to do
any of this. Injured players tend to sit on the sideline watching
everyone else play and in this process many have psychological
problems to deal with because of this. You don’t feel like you're
part of the team, you feel as if everyone around you is
improving or working hard while your sitting on your the bench,
you even as if everyone is judging you for sitting out, all of
these negative thought mess with a players state of mind and
their self-esteem levels in the process. When they go back into
play they don’t have the same thoughts as they did pre-injury,
and these new negative thoughts fill up their head affecting
their confidence and performance on the field. Everyone reacts
differently to injuries but athletes who are passionate about
playing get affected greatly especially when it’s the one thing
somebody is good at, they struggle at school, problems at home
but playing basketball took their mind off all of it and now they
can’t even do that. According to Trent A. Petrie and Jay Deiters
University of North Texas University all of these negative
effects and stress levels of athletes during injury mostly depend
on moderating effects of social support, athletic identity, and
especially mental toughness.
(Add how could be scared to go back to play, bc scared of
getting hurt or scared of not being as good)
· Mood Disturbance
· Fear of playing
· Psychological skill level
· Afraid of not being as good as I used to be.
Mental Toughness Relationship with Stress and Mental Health
Petrie and Dieters argue that when an athlete is mentally strong
they tend to deal with stress factors better than others. They

5. defined mental toughness as a collection of innate or learned
values, attitudes, cognitions, emotions, and behaviors that
impact how athletes assess and manage negative, adverse as
well as positive, challenging competitive situations to
consistently achieve their goals. By possessing these mentally
tough factors athletes can cope more effectively with the
difficult troublesome aspects of sport and to adapt more
successfully to the demanding challenging aspects of
competition. They argue that, “Examples of these mentally
tough cognitions and affects include believing in one’s ability
to achieve competitive goals, remaining positive in response to
difficult situations, challenging oneself to exert as much effort
as physically and emotionally possible, and channeling negative
emotions and using them to one’s advantage (pg. 16, Petrie &
Dieters). The best way to be ready against and overcome
adversity is to be mentally strong and work on your mental
health. Dealing with stress is a hard and to overcome depression
and negative thoughts is even harder but there are things you
can do to ease your comeback to play.
How to deal with negative factors that come with injury?/How
to help improve their mental health ?
There are many ways we can work on an athlete's mental health
while they are out of play. Improving their mental state while
being out of play is very important so players can come back
the same as before or even mentally stronger than before. As
Petrie and Dieters argued, we must improve an athlete's mental
toughness to cope more effectively with the difficult aspects
that come along with playing a sport, especially injury. They
also found in their study that social support was a big factor in
keeping athletes happy and focused. We have to make sure
athletes still feel like part of the team even if they are out for
the test of the season. It would be even more important if it is a
crucial injury like this. One way we could keep an athlete
content while in rehab would be giving workouts which don’t
include the injured body part, for example if a player has a
strained quad, we could still give them upper body workouts to

6. do on his own or during team practices so they feel like they are
still doing something. If we keep them busy with workouts they
are able to do, we can hold back negative thoughts such as not
working as hard as your teammates and getting out of shape by
sitting out. We keep them busy and their mind off of what is
affecting them. Another way to do this which was found
effective by…
was giving the injured players a special job, for example we
could tell the coach to have a conversation with him and make
hype man, tell him how important his spirit is to the team and
how they need to have him there still. This will make a player
feel needed and still part of the team. By giving him this
“special task” we also get his mind off of what is wrong with
him and keep him focused and contributing to overall team
success.
· Coach gives special jobs (hype man) make him feel part of the
team
· Keep checking in with them (follow-ups)
· Mankand argues in his study that an Analysis of writing
samples revealed increased use of linguistic markers indicating
affective awareness. Findings also highlighted the importance
of emotional disclosure and cognitive integration in reducing
stress and enhancing understanding of injury. Meaning that by
writing down how they feel and it helped them understand their
injury more and stay more positive throughout rehab
Work Cited
V :Filan, D., & Carton, P. (2021). Chronic Hip Injury Has a
Negative Emotional Impact on the Male Athlete With
Femoroacetabular Impingement. Arthroscopy: The Journal of
Arthroscopic and Related Surgery, 37(2), 566–576. https://doi-
org.ezproxy.whittier.edu/10.1016/j.arthro.2020.10.035
V :Petrie, T. A., Deiters, J., & Harmison, R. J. (2014). Mental

7. toughness, social support, and athletic identity: Moderators of
the life stress–injury relationship in collegiate football players.
Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 3(1), 13–27.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.whittier.edu/10.1037/a0032698
V :Mankad, A., Gordon, S., & Wallman, K. (2009).
Psycholinguistic Analysis of Emotional Disclosure: A Case
Study in Sport Injury. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology,
3(2), 182–196.
V Sheinbein, S. (2016). Psychological Effect of Injury on the
Athlete: A Recommendation for Psycholo gical Intervention.
AMAA Journal, 29(3), 8–10.