Influence of Stress and Anxiety on Sports Injuries in Athletes

Abstract

An athlete does not only require to be fit physically but also requires to be fit psychologically for their successful performance in sports activities. Hence, it is essential to understand the psychological risk factors which contribute to sport injuries in athletes. For this review, literature search in the international databases of PubMed, MEDLINE and Google Scholar was done by using following keywords: ‘sports injury’, ‘stress’, ‘anxiety’, ‘athletic injury’, ‘psychology’, ‘predictors’ and ‘athletes’. The studies published from 1992 to March 2020 and in the English language were included in this review. Of 120 articles obtained by the end of this search process, 18 full text articles were finally selected. Most of the study designs were cross-sectional studies or surveys, cohort studies and descriptive studies. The results indicated that stress and anxiety are two notable psychological variables which are associated with predicting injury in different sports and found to be significant with the incidence of sports injuries among athletes of different sports. It was found that stress and anxiety can influence the risk of injuries, injury frequency, and injury severity in athletes.