Athletes In individual Sports and Their Mental Health.

Individual Sports Are More Prone To Depression ?

Individual Sports emphasizes the training and dedication needed to succeed in sports where each player has only themselves to count on. Most importantly individual sports can prove more challenging emotionally and mentally. When solo athletes fail to reach their goals, it can have a demoralizing effect. 

Individual athletes attribute failure more to themselves than team sports athletes. They take the blame more than team players. 

 Individuals sports may cause greater internal attribution such as shame after failure which is directly linked to depressive symptoms. 

According to the reports found that athletes competing in track and field events had the most number of depressions.

Upto 20% of young athletes do have a problem with higher depression scores. This dramatic increase indicates that athletes are under higher amounts of stress and are more likely to be depressed. 

Sometimes sports serves as a tool to help an athlete cope with symptoms of mental illness, but sometimes the pressure of the sports may cause or contribute to anxiety and depression. The internal attribution could lead to stronger experiences of emotions such as pride and guilt or shame in athletes in individual sports. A study shows that the teenage athletes found those who played individual sports more likely reported experiencing anxiety and depression.

Individual athletes take both sporting success and failure more personally than team players. Sometimes depression is linked with a lack of time to recover from stress and injury. Individual athletes showed significantly more signs of symptoms such as guilt, sadness and suicidal feelings more than athletes in team sports. 

Sports is always a long and lonely journey

Ultimately when it comes down to performance the athletes is suddenly all alone. A player's performance is being monitored by everyone including the media. 

According to the research around 24% of Olympic and Paralympic athletes reported experiencing high psychological distress after the games.  There are uncountable reasons an athlete might experience a dark period.

We must build an environment where all sports professionals can fulfill their potentials. We need to see managers, coaches, clubs, governing bodies and players union all support athletes to manage their mental wellbeing. After all they have no one else to pull them through when things get difficult.