Psychosocial Aspects of Rehabilitation in Sports

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Key points

  • Awareness of the psychosocial response to athletic injury helps clinicians to effectively assist patients with the healing and recovery process.

  • Patients with high trait anxiety tend to have high state anxiety and this may influence thoughts and feelings about the injury and healing process.

  • Fear of reinjury can have a negative influence on the rehabilitation process because of concerns about returning to preinjury level, especially as the patient gets closer to return-to-play.

  • Effective

Introduction: nature of the problem

Injury is an inherent consequence of athletic participation. Athletic injury not only affects patients’ physical well-being, but also their self-concept, self-esteem, belief system, values, commitments, and emotional equilibrium.1 Often, sports medicine professionals focus on the physical damage from injury, while ignoring the psychosocial aspects of injury and the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with an injury.2 Athletic injury can be an imposing source of stress, and patients

Anxiety

Anxiety is a common psychosocial response to injury.11 Trait anxiety refers to how a person feels in general toward various situations that may influence anxiety levels.12 State anxiety describes how a person feels in the current moment about various situations that may influence anxiety levels.12 Patients who have high trait anxiety tend to have high state anxiety postinjury.13 Leddy and coworkers13 examined the psychosocial impact of injury in male Division I university athletes. Injured

Effective Communication

Because of the stressful and time-sensitive nature of athletic injuries, it can be difficult for health care professionals to educate and coordinate the plan of care with all the involved personal (eg, patient, physicians, and parents). However, effective communication between patients, health care professionals, and physicians is a key component for patient-oriented collaborative care.36 A review of 16 studies on communication in the medical field concluded that having effective

Clinical application of psychosocial techniques

When attempting to develop and implement a psychosocial skills program, health care professionals should consider that techniques may be used as stand-alone interventions, or may be combined based on the patient’s needs. Consider the use of therapeutic modalities when a patient is injured. To decrease pain, accomplish rehabilitation goals, and aid recovery, one may use several modalities at once, or one may focus on just one. With modalities, we may choose one over another because we believe it

Summary

There are many psychosocial factors that influence healing and the success of rehabilitation, including a patient’s self-confidence and self-efficacy; perceptions of control over the process; a patient’s motivation and effort with the prescribed rehabilitation program; perception of pain; and patient anxiety, fear, and worry. It is the goal of psychosocial skills to provide the patient with a greater perception of control over the healing and rehabilitation processes, and to provide them with

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