Sport-related head injury and performance anxiety

Head injury in sport is a highly individualized experience; the symptoms and persistence tend to differ widely between athletes. Neurocognitive deficits in head injury may be worsened by the emotional reaction of the athlete to the injury. Athletes that are removed from play due to musculoskeletal injuries tend to be anxious about becoming reinjured are more likely to be depressed and may have low attention and reaction time. Emotions that result from removal from play can have emotional, psychosocial, and career implications for the athletes. Despite this, there is a lack of literature directly examining the impact of head injury on mood, attention and anxiety about returning to play. The present study found that within 20 collegiate athletes (Head injured n=9; control n=11) there were few group differences on self-reported measures of anxiety, depression, self-regulation, or attention. This may suggest that athletes do not become more anxious, depressed, or inattentive as a result of head injuries or at least that they do not perceive any long-term impacts of their injuries. Future research should use larger sample sizes to examine this research question. Clinicians and researchers should also consider adding sport-specific measures of mood to baseline testing for athletes, and periodic updates of these attitudes as awareness, detection, and removal from play becomes more common for sport-related head injury cases