Sports Injury

Sports Injury

Recovering from a sport injury can be physically and emotionally challenging for an adolescent athlete. Previous research indicates elevated levels of anxiety, stress and depression following sport injuries. Providing effective social support following a sport injury has found to influence an athletes' ability to cope with the experience of getting injured and assist in rehabilitation adherence. This paper aims to examine the emotional disturbance following a sport injury in the adolescent population and determine the effects of social support provided to the athlete.

Discussion

Sports injuries are injuries that happen when playing sports or during exercise. Some are from accidents. Others may be the result of poor training practices or improper training equipment. Some people get injured when they are in good physical condition. In some cases, the lesions are due to the lack or scarcity of warming up or stretching exercises before you play or exercise. The most common sports injuries are:

Sprains and strains of ligaments and tears of muscles and tendons;

Knee Injury;

Muscle swelling;

Injuries to the Achilles tendon;

Pain along the shin bone (tibia);

Fractures, and

Dislocations.

Sports injuries can be prevented through good physical condition. Research has shown that strength training and flexibility allows for better performance and reduces the risk of injury. When injury occurs it reveals a flaw in the physical preparation, the choice of materials used or the technical sports used. It will cause an adjustment in the prospective sports program but only if care, immediate and long term, and get adapted to the total healing done. When a sport injury occurs, an athlete's ability to react extends far beyond physical responses. Investigators conclude that athletes following physical injuries, experience expected psychological effects including anxiety, anger, depression, frustration, fatigue, confusion, and decreased self-esteem that might reach clinically significant magnitude and has exposed to play a considerable part in the process of recovery. Although significant advances have made in orthopedic assessment, sports medicine and physical rehabilitation of athletic injuries, there continues to be less attention to the emotional and psychological rehabilitation of an injured athlete (Domrow & Gabbett, 2005, p. 428-434).

Despite the evidence that emotional and psychological disturbance associated with athletic injury, it is unclear in the identification process, assessment and duration of emotional disturbance including depressive symptoms post injury for the adolescent population. Investigations have not elicited specific rehabilitative measures for emotional and psychological changes of the adolescent injured athlete population (Dekker, et.al, 2003, p. 480-487). The lack of immediate sport injury care at the secondary school level is a contributing factor to the inability. To identify physical and emotional changes in the high school athlete that accompanies an injury requiring rehabilitation and/or surgery. Research by the National Athletic Training Association (NATA) Membership statistics and the National Centre for Education Statistics (2008) revealed that as of October 2008 the total number of registered certified athletic trainers in the United States was 34,630. It suggested by research that social support might act as a vital coping source for those athletes who undergo ...