Issues associated with athletics, alcohol abuse, and drug use continue to be salient aspects of popular culture. These issues include high-profile athletes experiencing public incidents as a direct or indirect result of alcohol and/or drug use, the role that performance-enhancing drugs play in impacting outcomes across a variety of professional and amateur contests, and the public-health effects alcohol abuse and drug use can have among athletes at all competitive levels. For some substances, like alcohol abuse, certain groups of athletes may be particularly at-risk relative to peers who are not athletes. For other substances, participating in athletics may serve as a protective factor. Unique considerations are associated with understanding alcohol abuse and drug use in sport. These include performance considerations (e.g., choosing to use or not use a certain substance due to concerns about its impact on athletic ability), the cultural context of different types of sporting environments that might facilitate or inhibit alcohol and/or drug use, and various internal personality characteristics and traits that may draw one toward both athletic activity and substance use. Fortunately, there are several effective strategies for preventing and reducing alcohol abuse and drug use, some of which have been tested specifically among athlete populations. If such strategies were widely disseminated, they would have the potential to make a significant impact on problems associated with alcohol abuse and drug use in sport and athletics.
Article
Cathy Creswell, Sasha Walters, Brynjar Halldorsson, and Peter J. Lawrence
Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders among children and young people, affecting an estimated 6.5% of children and young people worldwide. Childhood anxiety disorders often persist into adulthood if left untreated and are associated with a significant emotional and financial cost to individuals, their families, and wider society. Models of the development and maintenance of childhood anxiety disorders have underpinned prevention and treatment approaches, and cognitive behavioral treatments have good evidence for their efficacy. Ongoing challenges for the field include the need to improve outcomes for those that do not benefit from current prevention and treatment, and to increase access to those who could benefit.
Article
Kim Van Orden, Caroline Silva, and Yeates Conwell
Suicide in later life is a significant public health problem around the world—a problem that will increase in magnitude in the coming years with the impact of population aging. Adults age 70 and older have higher suicide rates than younger groups worldwide in both lower-income and higher-income countries. While suicide rates tend to increase with age, suicide in later life is not an expected or normative response to stressors that accompany the aging process. Instead, a constellation of risk factors places an older adult at elevated risk for suicide. These factors can be remembered as the Five D’s: psychiatric illness (primarily depression); functional impairment (also called disability, often associated with dependency on others); physical illness (particularly multiple comorbid diseases); social disconnectedness (including social isolation, loneliness, family conflict, and feeling like a burden); and access to lethal (deadly) means. The greatest risk occurs when multiple domains of risk converge in a given individual. Approaches to prevention can address the Five D’s. Given that older adults are reluctant to seek out mental healthcare and that standard primary care practice cannot easily provide it, models of primary care-based integrated care management for mental disorders, including in older adulthood, have been developed, rigorously tested, and widely disseminated. These models play an important role in suicide prevention by integrating treatment for physical and mental illness. Upstream, selective prevention strategies that target disconnectedness—such as engaging older adults as volunteers—may serve to reduce disconnectedness and thereby reduce suicide risk. Universal prevention strategies that involve growing the geriatric workforce may address disability by increasing older adults’ access to medical and social service providers with expertise in improving physical, cognitive, and social functioning, as well as improving quality of life. Addressing ageism and building age-friendly communities that use strategies to integrate older adults into society and promote social participation hold promise as universal prevention strategies. Ultimately, effective suicide prevention strategies for older adults must focus on improving quality of life as well as preventing suicide: strategies such as psychotherapy and medication for psychiatric disorders must be supplemented by prevention strategies for older adults give at all ages in addition to treating psychiatric disorders and suicidal thoughts is needed to address the problem of suicide in later life.
Article
Loredana A. Marchica and Jeffrey L. Derevensky
With the gambling market continuously shifting and evolving, one form of gambling has uninterruptedly remained a staple in most cultures. Sports wagering has been and remains one of the most popular forms of gambling, especially among males. With the increase in the gambling market, sports wagering has also grown into the online gambling and fantasy sports wagering markets. These escalations in popularity have brought substantial revenue to sports wagering operators and have influenced government officials, policymakers, legislation researchers, the media, and the general public. There are two major groups of issues that surround sports wagering: sports wagering as an economic and tax-generating entity and the integrity of the game. More recently, a concern over problem gambling from a public health perspective has evolved. It is equally important that these issues be considered when creating or changing legislation around sports wagering.
Article
Monna Arvinen-Barrow
This article aims to provide a narrative overview on injury prevention in sport and performance psychology. Research and applied interest in psychological injury prevention in sport and performance psychology has risen in popularity over the past few decades. To date, existing theoretical models, pure and applied research, and practice-based evidence has focused on conceptualizing and examining psychological injury occurrence and prevention through stress-injury mechanisms, and predominantly in sport injury settings. However, given the inherited similarities across the different performance domains however, it is the authors’ belief that existing injury prevention knowledge can be transferable beyond sport but should be done with caution. A range of cognitive-affective-behavioral strategies such as goal setting, imagery, relaxation strategies, self-talk, and social support have been found beneficial in reducing injuries, particularly when used systematically (a) prior to injury occurrence as part of performance enhancement program and/or as a specific injury prevention measure, (b) during injury rehabilitation, and (c) as part of a return-to-activity process to minimize the risk of secondary injuries and reinjuries. Existing theoretical and empirical evidence also indicates that using cognitive-affective-behavioral strategies for injury prevention are effective when used as part of a wider, multi-modal intervention. Equally, such interventions may also need to address possible behavioral modifications required in sleep, rest, and recovery. Considering the existing empirical and anecdotal evidence to date, this paper argues that injury prevention efforts in sport and performance psychology should be cyclical, biopsychosocial, and person-centered in nature. In short, injury prevention should be underpinned by recognition of the interplay between personal (both physical and psychological), environmental, and contextual characteristics, and how they affect the persons’ cognitive-affective-behavioral processes before, during, and after injury occurrence, at different phases of rehabilitation, and during the return to activity or retirement from activity process. Moreover, these holistic injury prevention efforts should be underpinned by a philosophy that injury prevention is inherently intertwined with performance enhancement, with the focus being on the individual and their overall well-being.
Article
Sharon Glazer and Cong Liu
Work stress refers to the process of job stressors, or stimuli in the workplace, leading to strains, or negative responses or reactions. Organizational development refers to a process in which problems or opportunities in the work environment are identified, plans are made to remediate or capitalize on the stimuli, action is taken, and subsequently the results of the plans and actions are evaluated. When organizational development strategies are used to assess work stress in the workplace, the actions employed are various stress management interventions. Two key factors tying work stress and organizational development are the role of the person and the role of the environment. In order to cope with work-related stressors and manage strains, organizations must be able to identify and differentiate between factors in the environment that are potential sources of stressors and how individuals perceive those factors. Primary stress management interventions focus on preventing stressors from even presenting, such as by clearly articulating workers’ roles and providing necessary resources for employees to perform their job. Secondary stress management interventions focus on a person’s appraisal of job stressors as a threat or challenge, and the person’s ability to cope with the stressors (presuming sufficient internal resources, such as a sense of meaningfulness in life, or external resources, such as social support from a supervisor). When coping is not successful, strains may develop. Tertiary stress management interventions attempt to remediate strains, by addressing the consequence itself (e.g., diabetes management) and/or the source of the strain (e.g., reducing workload). The person and/or the organization may be the targets of the intervention. The ultimate goal of stress management interventions is to minimize problems in the work environment, intensify aspects of the work environment that create a sense of a quality work context, enable people to cope with stressors that might arise, and provide tools for employees and organizations to manage strains that might develop despite all best efforts to create a healthy workplace.
Article
Michael J. Valenzuela
Cognitive reserve refers to the many ways that neural, cognitive, and psychosocial processes can adapt and change in response to brain aging, damage, or disease, with the overarching effect of preserving cognitive function. Cognitive reserve therefore helps to explain why cognitive abilities in late life vary as dramatically as they do, and why some individuals are brittle to degenerative pathology and others exceptionally resilient. Historically, the term has evolved and at times suffered from vague, circular, and even competing notions. Fortunately, a recent broad consensus process has developed working definitions that resolve many of these issues, and here the evidence is presented in the form of a suggested Framework: Contributors to cognitive reserve, which include environmental exposures that demand new learning and intellectual challenge, genetic factors that remain largely unknown, and putative G × E interactions; mechanisms of cognitive reserve that can be studied at the biological, cognitive, or psychosocial level, with a common theme of plasticity, flexibility, and compensability; and the clinical outcome of (enriched) cognitive reserve that can be summarized as a compression of cognitive morbidity, a relative protection from incident dementia but increased rate of progression and mortality after diagnosis. Cognitive reserve therefore has great potential to address the global challenge of aging societies, yet for this potential to be realized a renewed scientific, clinical, and societal focus will be required.
Article
E. Tory Higgins and Emily Nakkawita
Self-discrepancy theory and regulatory focus theory are two related motivational theories. Self-discrepancy theory describes the associations between self and affect, positing that the relations among different sets of self-concepts influence a person’s emotional experience. A discrepancy between a person’s ideal self-guide (e.g., hopes and aspirations) and his or her actual self-concept produces dejection-related emotions (e.g., sadness), whereas a discrepancy between a person’s ought self-guide (e.g., duties and obligations) and his or her actual self-concept produces agitation-related emotions (e.g., anxiety). The intensity of these emotional experiences depends upon the magnitude and accessibility of the associated discrepancy.
Regulatory focus theory builds on self-discrepancy theory, positing that distinct self-regulatory systems are reflected in the two types of self-guides proposed in self-discrepancy theory. The promotion system is motivated by ideal end-states, by pursuing hopes and aspirations; as a result, it is primarily concerned with the presence or absence of positive outcomes—with gains and non-gains. Given this focus on gains and non-gains, the promotion system is motivated by fundamental needs for nurturance and growth. In contrast, the prevention system is motivated by ought end-states, by fulfilling duties and obligations; as a result, it is primarily concerned with the presence or absence of negative outcomes—with losses and non-losses. Given this focus on losses and non-losses, the prevention system is motivated by fundamental needs for safety and security. The promotion and prevention systems predict a range of important variables relating to cognition, performance, and decision-making.
