Fear of Injury, Kinesiophobia & Perceived Risk

It is a well-documented fact that decreases in athletic performance after injury can be attributed to both psychological and physical factors (Dunn, 1999). The sports professionals have become aware of the integral role that psychological factors play in the injury occurrence and recovery processes. For this reason, such constructs like “perceiving fear” and “confidence in avoiding injury”, “fear of pain” and “fear of injury” have become important factors to consider when dealing with injured athletes. The previous information paints an intricate picture of an athlete’s psychological response to injury, but lacking information regarding emotional factors it is difficult to reliably predict athletes at high risk for injury. Although sports psychologists have contributed invaluable information to this concern, the emotional aspects of injury have not yet been fully addressed. The emotion of fear has not been excluded from research on general orthopedic injuries, but it has not been highly considered among athletes. Athletes are generally perceived as warrior type individuals who do not harbor emotions such as fear. This may be a major misperception considering that athletes face possible physical harm every time they step onto the field. When a nonathletic individual suffers an injury, he or she is faced with the difficulty of completing normal daily tasks due to pain and a loss of mobility. Once the person returns to pre-injury level, he or she is still only faced with the challenge of completing normal daily tasks. An athlete on the other hand, is not only faced with the challenges of daily functioning, but also faced with the challenge of returning to the field. Though he or she has overcome the injury, the athlete must deal with possibility of re-injury due to the high demands of sport activity. Therefore, the challenges for an injured athlete are quite complex because the act of returning to play forces an athlete to participate in the exact activity that caused the injury initially. Being faced with memories of pain and discomfort is likely to cause some level of fear. Given the complexity of the athlete’s experience of injury, it seems erroneous to ignore fear as a possible component of re-injury.