How does belonging to a sports team effect mental wellbeing? Utilizing the Social Identity Approach in the context of a male adolescent rugby team.

In Aotearoa New Zealand mental health is a complex issue in many groups within society, perhaps none more so than adolescent males. Given a large number of adolescent males in Aotearoa New Zealand play rugby, in the current thesis, I investigate how sports teams may enhance resilience and self-esteem, utilising the Social Identity Approach as a theoretical framework. Further, I utilised ethnographic methods to get a better understanding of how an adolescent sports team functions, and to gain a better understanding of how mental health interventions and health promotion could be utilised with this unique context. There were three hypotheses. First, that psychological resilience and self-esteem would increase from the start to end of the season. Second, that measures of social identity would increase from the start to the end of the season. Finally, that social identity would predict increases in self-esteem and psychological resilience. Questionnaires were deployed at three time points, the start of season, end of season, and several weeks post season. Support for our hypotheses was mixed. Specifically, while resilience and self-esteem did not change over the course of the season, we did observe an increase in one identity-related measure (identity fusion). Further, although resilience did not change from the start to the end of the season, social identity did make a contribution contribute to psychological resilience. I discuss these findings in relation to both the Social Identity Approach and my own qualitative findings