Assessing Psychological Challenges And Support Systems For Athletes Following Involuntary Medical Exit From Sport

PURPOSE: Athletes face psychological challenges following serious injury, and unanticipated and involuntary exit from sport can be a highly traumatic event for athletes. Numerous studies have examined return to play readiness, but few studies have been dedicated to understanding the consequences of involuntary medical exit (IME) from sport. This study investigates the psychological challenges faced by these athletes following IME, and the support received. METHODS: Participants of the survey are medically retired athletes who underwent IME (n = 104) from over 20 different sports. Data was obtained via online survey consisting of 31 questions over 6 sections: demographics, background on participants’ medical exit from support, circumstances of medical exit from primary sport, emotional/psychological response to medical departure from primary sport, support received during medical exit, and continued involvement in their team or sport after personal exit from competition. RESULTS: The athletes frequently cited support from others as helpful, with 39.42% (n = 41) citing talking with a counselor or therapist, 26.92% (n = 28) talking with their athletic trainer, 23.08% (n = 24) talking with a coach, 63.46% (n = 66) talking with friends/family, and 65.38% (n = 68) citing physical activity/exercise as helpful. However, when asked about extent of support from their circle (coaches, athletic trainers, teammates, parents/guardians, and counselors) via rating on a Likert scale of 1-6 (extremely unhelpful to extremely helpful), the greatest degree of variance in responses was seen with coaches (n = 104, mean 3.28, SD 1.53, variance 2.35) and athletic trainers (n = 104, mean 4.07, SD 1.58, variance 2.49). Counselors had the greatest mean score for helpfulness (n = 104, mean 4.82, SD 1.36, variance 1.84). CONCLUSIONS: These results highlight the potential of coaches, athletic trainers, and counselors as positive sources of support during an athletes IME transition, however there is also variance in these experiences in athletes. There is no current standard of care in treating psychological issues in athletes following IME. Further studies and development of guidelines may help provide a more uniformly positive and meaningful experience to IME athletes. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: TL Neal, C Pinalto, JM Stanek, K Bullard