Integrated Approach to Issues Related to Athletes Injuries - Research Paper Example

Different research works have examined the psychology related to sports injury from the post-injury and pre-injury standpoints. Pre-injury psychological factors that have been regarded to relate to the occurrence of sports injury include life stresses, personality, and coping resources. According to some research works, following a sports injury, the psychological consequences of sports injury often encompass emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses (Brown, 1995). Therefore, the post-injury responses can be analyzed psychologically responsive models.

The application of these models will help towards understanding the underlying sports injury and the desired rehabilitation process to be undertaken including the social environment responses required towards the same injuries. Many conceptual models have been applied to provide reference frames towards understanding the psychological response to sports injury. The commonly used primary models include grief process and stress process models. Weiss and Troxel (1986) first applied the models that they identified as vital processes of examining situational and personal factors that often affect the responses of athletes to the stress caused through injury.

However, their investigation was very limited to empirical evidence that exists in such situations (Daly, Brewer, VanRmlte, Petitpas, and Sklar, 1995). Nonetheless, they linked these models of psychological response to areas that are related to sports stress including sports anxiety. According to these authors, these models are suitable for understanding the injuries that are related to sporting activities. Moreover, they noted that these process models are stresses that lead to or prompt cognitive appraisals.

The cognitive appraisals are considered to influence emotional responses that finally influence and affect behavioral responses to sports injuries. In the same year, 1986, Pederson and Gordon were concerned that there is the possibility of athletes portraying a grief response in relation to sports injuries. The work of these two was influenced by Kubler-Ross in 1969. According to Kubler – Ross, there is a five-stage response in regards to sports injury and they include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance or reorganization.

However, regarding the stress-based model, the Kubler – Ross’ model virtually portrayed no empirical documentation to support the stage-based grief responses. However, Gordon (1986) outlined the need to investigate and examine sport injury responses in relation to the cognitive-behavioral approach. Rose and Jevne elicit the conceptual model, particularly through the approach of the inductive qualitative theory that was proposed in the year 1993. These two interviewed seven competitive athletes who drove through four-phase “risk models.

” This model involved getting the injured, acknowledging their injuries, dealing with the effects of the injuries, and achieving psychological and physical results. The major concern in this model is to determine or learn the lessons that are related to the injury. Notably, the same understandings are similar to the adoption process model that was identified in the year 1992 by Gavin and Taylor. The recent incorporation of the cognitive appraisal and stress process models has been incorporated in the pre-injury model in consideration of the post-injury.

Wiese-Bjornstal et al. (1995) and Wiese-Bjornstal and Smith (1993) proposed both operational and conceptual models for the post-injury psychological response that are driven from deductive analysis of empirical research. The factors included herein are supported empirically. Additionally, Grove also provided one of the stress-based models that focused on the personality as the influencing factors in thought, behavior, and feelings of the athletes during rehabilitation. In the year 1994, Brewer reviewed the stage-based and process-based models (Brewer, and Petrie, 1995)towards calculating the cognitive appraisal models and deduced that the cognitive appraisal models are vital for understanding the sport injury processes (Astle, 1986).

However, in the year 1995, Evans and Hardy proposed that the recent grief response conceptualizations in the clinical psychology literature indicate that it is unlikely to stage since it is more dynamic compared to the earlier versions; therefore, it should be given considerable attention by the sport psychology researchers. Moreover, they called for the review of the grief process in relation to sports injuries. According to them, grief is usually pegged on the emotional response that is perceived on loss and in terms of process; it can only be characterized by psychological and behavioral manifestations.

Nonetheless, it is vital to note that the grief process and cognitive appraisal models are never mutually exclusive. For instance, sports injury loss is a form of cognitive appraisal that often leads to emotions that are commonly associated with grief. Therefore, the grief process model has to be applied in analyzing sports injuries that can be subsumed in the wider integrated category of the stress process model. In most cases, the integrated models often posit that the post-injury and pre-injury factors are influenced by psychological responses that can change depending on other factors including psychological and physical outcomes or factors.