Psychology of sports injury

Psychological measures can be a useful tool for predicting athletic injury, although the influence of mood and stress on injury risk appears relatively modest, according to new Australian research (‘Psychological predictors of injury among elite athletes’, Br J Sports Med 2005; 39:351-354).

As part of their annual screening procedure, the 700 athletes attending the Queensland Academy of Sport report on their medical and psychological status. The researchers reviewed data from 845 such screenings, carried out between 2002 and 2004, to establish any link between mood, life stress and injury characteristics with a view to finding ways to reduce injury risk through psychological intervention.

The psychology section of this screening process includes two standardised measures: the Brunel Mood Scale, assessing levels of anger, confusion, depression, fatigue, tension and vigour; and the Perceived Stress Scale-10, assessing the degree to which life situations are appraised as stressful.

The overall incidence of athletes reporting at least one injury in the previous 12 months was 67.1%, with 17.3% of athletes reporting two or more injuries. At the time of screening, 18.2% of athletes were injured.

Analysis of the data showed significantly elevated life stress and significant mood disturbance on all scales except vigour among the injured athletes compared with those who had not been injured in the preceding 12 months.

Further analysis showed that the mood and life stress scores allowed the researchers to group athletes for back pain – current, previous or never – with 48% accuracy compared with an accuracy of 33% by chance alone.

The researchers conclude that although measures of mood and perceived life stress do predict injury- related variables, the effect is relatively modest, making it unlikely that psychological intervention alone could be a major tool in injury prevention.

Isabel Walker is the editor of Peak Performance