Psychological responses to injury in competitive sport: a critical review

Research has attempted to examine the psychological impact of athletic injury to assist rehabilitation personnel when treating injured athletes. Sports trainers, sports therapists, physiotherapists, medical staff and sports psychologists should be aware of psychological factors impacting on the injury experience when involved in an athlete's rehabilitation. A number of models have been proposed as useful frameworks for investigating and describing the psychological response to athletic injury. Many researchers have relied upon applying or adapting grief and cognitive appraisal models originally derived from the clinical and stress related psychology literature in an attempt to describe the psychological response to athletic injury. This article provides an overview of these models and offers a critical appraisal of this research, specifically focusing on the grief response models and the integrated model of response to sport injury and rehabilitation. Criticisms focus on the lack of research supporting a uniformed sequence of stages as a feature of response to athletic injury. Further grief criticisms centre on the absence of denial in much of the research to date. The article then focuses on the dynamic core of the integrated response to sport injury and rehabilitation model. It is argued that the interrelationships between emotional responses, behavioural responses, cognitive appraisals and recovery outcomes are not as simple as suggested in the mode

Perceived barriers to physical activity for colorectal cancer survivors

Purpose Promoting physical activity among cancer survivors is a high priority. Understanding barriers to physical activity provides an evidence base to inform relevant strategies for doing so. Methods Telephone interviews were conducted with colorectal cancer survivors at 5 (n=538) and 12 months post-diagnosis (n=403). We used an ecological model of health behaviour to classify participants' perceived barriers to physical activity into four sub-categories: physical environment, social environment, personal attributes, and disease-specific barriers. Results Disease-specific barriers were perceived as the greatest challenge to colorectal cancer survivors being more physically active, closely followed by personal attributes. The physical environment presented the least salient perceived barriers; however, the physical environment was most closely associated with achieving sufficient levels of physical activity at 5 months post-diagnosis. The difficulties most frequently reported by participants at both time points were belief that they were already active enough, not feeling well enough to be physically active, and experiencing fatigue. Conclusions These findings suggest potential points for intervention to influence physical activity among colorectal cancer survivors