As discussed in this weeks’ lecture, readings, and videos; athletes with greater levels of stress are at higher risk of developing an injury. You may intuit that using psychosocial stress management strategies to assist an individual to control their stress levels may reduce the risk of injury. Research supports this (Gledhill, Forsdyke and Murray, 2018). The Stress and Injury model (Williams and Andersen, 1998) defines “coping resources” as a mediator of the stress response. Coping resources are defined as “behaviors and social networks that help the individual deal with the problems, joys, disappointments and stresses of life” (Andersen and Williams, 1988, p. 302).Psychosocial stress management strategies can be viewed as a coping resource. Such strategies can work by either:
changing or shifting the perception of an event (i.e. not perceiving an event as stressful)
minimizing the effects of a stressful event (i.e. buffering symptoms of stress) There is a wide range of Psychosocial stress management strategies that can and have been used for injury reduction. The purpose of this assignment is to get you more familiar with psychosocial stress management strategies that may assist in preventing injury as well as look at any counter indications for using a particular strategy. For you assignment this week please do the following:
Identify and summarize 5 different psychosocial stress management strategies that could be used for injury reduction.
For each strategy, discuss if there are any negative implications or challenges for the use of that strategy.