SPORTS AND PSYCHOLOGY

How Sport Might Have Negative Impact on an Athlete's Well-Being

How Sport Might Have Negative Impact on an Athlete's Well-Being

Introduction

Every year around the world countries makes billions and trillions of money through sports. Millions of individuals are crazy about sports and can spare money and time to watch or play sports. Sports are widely known as recreational activity that proves good for the well being of athletes and viewers. Traditionally, sport has been seen to promote positive character development and psychological well-being. However, this is not always true. Recent studies have demonstrated the fact that in certain scenarios sports might contribute in casting negative impacts on athlete's well being.

The document focuses on what are these negative impacts and how can they impact a sportsman negatively under the psychological paradigm. The content of the article is designed to explore the issue with reference to transition phase from junior athlete to senior professional athlete.

Discussion

The Transition and Associated Factors

At present literature lacks extensive and elaborated work in regards with athletic career transition in relation to well-being and health issues. The switch from junior to senior is an important aspect of the career growth framework in athletics. The change involves a modification of one's social environment, emotions, self-perception, thoughts and interpersonal relationships. Transition is phase that features particular resources, demands, coping barriers, out-comes, and long term consequences. In each and every transition a sportsman is challenged with certain demands that she or he will need to struggle with in order to render a booming transition and achieve a prestigious status in sports world. The outcome of combating the demands is determined by the powerful balance between coping the resources and barriers. An athlete's coping resources consist of variables that aid the approach of seniority, for example motivation, knowledge and social-support. Barriers consist of variables that hinder successful problem management and survival during the transition phase, for instance insufficient critical skills, or / and in case the sportsman is facing trouble incorporating athletics with work or education. The result is going to be either a prosperous transition or a crisis transition. A prosperous transition is achieved as a result of effective and victorious coping with the barriers and demands. A crisis transition is attributable to in-effective coping by the sportsman.

When an athlete undergoes crisis there is need for psychological counseling or intervention. For Athletes well being refers to health, optimal functioning of skills and physical/mental strengths and quality of life. Well-being comprises of objective and subjective factors that includes, mental, social, physical, spiritual and role-functioning. For an athlete the performance and activity; recovery and renewal are equally important for well being and health and hence equilibrium must be kept between all these dimensions.

Transition and Challenges

The transition from junior to senior sports is well-known to be challenging and difficult changeover for athletes. The progress to another standard of competition calls for greater expectations and challenges. Sports-athletes are expected to set all other activities aside to give attention to their progress in sports ...