Sport-Related Concussion and Mental Health Outcomes in Elite Athletes: A Systematic Review

BackgroundElite athletes can experience a diverse range of symptoms following post-concussive injury. The impact of sport-related concussion on specific mental health outcomes is unclear in this population.ObjectiveThe aim was to appraise the evidence base regarding the association between sport-related concussion and mental health outcomes in athletes competing at elite and professional levels.MethodsA systematic search of PubMed, EMBASE, SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, Cochrane, and Cinahl databases was conducted.ResultsA total of 27 studies met inclusion criteria for review. Most of the included studies (67%, n = 18) were published in 2014 or later. Study methodology and reporting varied markedly. The extant research has been conducted predominantly in North America (USA, n = 23 studies; Canada, n = 3), often in male only (44.4%, n = 12) and college (70.4%, n = 19) samples. Depression is the most commonly studied mental health outcome (70.4%, n = 19 studies). Cross-sectional retrospective studies and studies including a control comparison tend to support an association between concussion exposure and depression symptoms, although several studies report that these symptoms resolved in the medium term (i.e. 1 month) post-concussion. Evidence for anxiety is mixed. There are insufficient studies to draw conclusions for other mental health domains.ConclusionConsistent with current recommendations to assess mood disturbance in post-concussive examinations, current evidence suggests a link between sports-related concussion and depression symptoms in elite athletes. Causation cannot be determined at this stage of enquiry because of the lack of well-designed, prospective studies. More research is required that considers a range of mental health outcomes in diverse samples of elite athletes/sports.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Sports Medicine

• Publication date

  2017-11-20

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s40279-017-0810-3PMID 29159546PMCID 5775382
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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