Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Summary

Injury is an inevitable consequence of regular participation in sport and exercise—
especially if vigorous physical contact occurs between athletes. Unfortunately, until
relatively recently, little was known about the ways in which sports performers tend to
perceive and/or react to the injuries which they experience. Therefore, the purpose of this
chapter was to explore the mental side of sports injuries.

• The chapter began with an attempt to trace the shift from a “physical” to a “mental”
  perspective on injuries in sport.


• After that, a brief analysis was provided of the nature, prevalence and causes of athletic
  injuries. In this section, a number of conceptual and methodological issues were
  addressed. For example, no clear consensus exists about how to either define or
  measure the severity of a sports injury. Despite this problem, two main theories have
  been postulated to describe how athletes react psychologically to injuries. These
  theories are the grief stages model and the cognitive appraisal approach.


• After a review of the strengths and limitations of these theories of injury reaction in
  athletes, I explained some practical psychological strategies used in the rehabilitation
  of injured athletes.


• After that, several potentially fruitful new directions for research on psychological
  aspects of injury were outlined.


• Finally, three suggestions were provided for possible research projects in this field.

Helping athletes to cope with injury: from theory to practice 265