Psychosocial Factors Influencing Injury Risk in Competitive Athletes: A Systematic Review

Sport injury prevalence ranges from 20-30 million per year within the UK and US impeding sports participation greatly. As well as the personal detriment for the players, this also results in significant financial cost., For example, sports injuries cost the English Premier League approximately 45 million per year between 2012/13 and 2016/17, and for European clubs an average of 500,000 euros per month which suggests a comprehensive understanding is important from both a health, and financial perspective. Electronic database searching, forward and backward citation searching and bibliography searching was completed on 08/03/23. Studies that included competitive athletes and psychosocial risk factors influencing injury risk were included. 52 studies evaluated 10,994 athletes, 13 coaches and 5 physiotherapists. Three core themes were identified, namely: Injury-related Cognitions such as Athletic Identity; Injury-related Emotions such as stress and anxiety and Injury-related Behaviours such as autonomy support. Psychosocial stress is the most widely reported risk factor for sports injuries, and in agreement with The Model of Stress and Athletic injury research commonly suggests that effective coping strategies can help to reduce this risk.