The general and sport psychology research converge to point to a complex relationship
between depressive experiences and human performance. The purpose of this study
was to explore the depressive experiences of top level athletes and the relationship
of such experiences with sport performance. Twelve autobiographies of elite athletes
representing eight sports were analyzed. The autobiographical analysis was informed
by narrative tradition, using three types of narrative analysis: categorical content,
categorical form, and holistic content. The analysis revealed a temporal aspect to
the depressive experiences that the athletes reported. Initially, sport represented a
form of escape from the depressive symptoms which had been exacerbated by both
external stressors (e.g., experiencing bereavement) and internal stressors (e.g., low self esteem).
However, in time, the athletes typically reached a stage when the demands
of their sport shifted from being facilitative to being debilitative in nature with an
intensification of their depressive symptoms. This was accompanied by deliberations
about continuing their engagement in sport and an acceptance that they could no
longer escape from their symptoms, with or without sport. The findings extend the
extant literature by suggesting a reciprocal relationship between depressive experiences
and sport performance, and they support the general psychology literature relating to
the negative impact of depression on performance. The applied implications of these
findings are discussed emphasizing the importance of early identification of depressive
symptoms and the adoption of a proactive approach in the prevention and management
of symptoms.
History
School
Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
Volume
7
Pages
? - ? (12)
Citation
NEWMAN, H.J.H., HOWELLS, K.L. and FLETCHER, D., 2016. The dark side of top level sport: an autobiographic study of depressive experiences in elite sport performers. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 868.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/
Publication date
2016
Notes
This is an open-access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/