Mental Health in Professional Football Players

Abstract

Symptoms of common mental disorders describe a mental and emotional state of adverse thoughts and/or abnormal or maladaptive behaviour that impair activities either in daily life, work or sport. Examples of symptoms of common mental disorders are often related to distress, burnout, anxiety, depression or sleep disturbance. Among professional footballers, 4-week prevalence of symptoms of common mental disorders ranges from 9% for adverse alcohol use to 38% for anxiety/depression and 12-month incidence from 12% for distress to 37% for anxiety/depression. Symptoms of common mental disorders are generally multifactorial, occurring as a consequence of the interaction between biological, psychological, social, sport-specific and career-related stressors. Especially, severe time-loss (28 days or more) injuries during a football career can be considered as a major stressor. Professional footballers who have sustained one or more severe time-loss injuries during their career are two to four to nearly four times more likely to report symptoms of a mental disorder than professional footballers who have not suffered from similar time-loss injuries. Most of professional footballers mention that symptoms of common mental disorders influence football performance negatively, while those symptoms are likely to interfere with return to play, especially in terms of concentration, focus, emotion, reaction time, coordination, power, strength and endurance. This emphasises the importance of applying a multidisciplinary approach to the clinical care and support of professional footballers, especially when a player faces severe time-loss injuries and related return to play process.