Journal of General Psychology: Examination of psychiatric symptoms in student athletes

THE RESULTS OF STUDIES in which researchers have examined the relationship between psychiatric symptoms and exercise are mixed (Salmon, 2000). Some results have indicated that moderate levels of exercise are associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, somatization disorders, obsession, psychoticism, and neurotism (Daino, 1985; Davis & Mogk, 1994; Freemont & Craighead, 1987; Griest, Klein, Eischens, Faris, Gurman, & Morgan, 1979; Martinsen, Sandvik, & Kolbjornsrud, 1989; McCann & Holmes, 1984; Sime, 1987; Tkachuk & Martin, 1999). However, some researchers have found that individuals who regularly engage in athletic activities consume more alcohol than do their nonathlete peers (Nattiv, Puffer, & Green, 1997), and others have found that competitive athletes appear to be at greater risk for eating disorders (Brewer & Petrie, 1996) and impulsive behavior problems such as gambling (Weiss, 1999) compared with nonathletes.

Researchers have yet to conduct empirical investigations that compare competitive (e.g., National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA) athletes and noncompetitive (i.e., recreational) athletes across multiple domains of psychiatric functioning. Moreover, few researchers have used standardized instruments with multiple scales to compare the degree of mental health in male and female athletes with that of their nonathlete counterparts. Therefore, the purpose of the present investigation was twofold: (a) To compare the mental health of competitive NCAA athletes with that of undergraduate student athletes who participate in recreational sporting activities; and (b) to compare the psychiatric functioning of the competitive and noncompetitive student athletes combined with control students in a general sample. We hypothesized that the NCAA athletes and the recreational athletes would show similar severity of overall psychiatric symptoms and that the NCAA and recreational athletes combined would show significantly less overall psychological distress than would the nonathlete student controls.

Method

Participants

The participants were 72 NCAA athletes and 64 recreational athletes who were enrolled at a university in southwestern United States. Forty-eight percent were female (n = 65), and the mean age of the participants was 19.69 years (SD = 1.74). They were motivated to participate in the study to fulfill credit requirements in their entry-level psychology course. Seventy-one percent were Caucasian, 10% were African American, 6% were Hispanic, and 13% were of other ethnic minority descent. The primary sports were swimming (23%), track and field (11%), basketball (8%), volleyball (8%), and softball (8%); various other sports (e.g., baseball, wrestling, boxing) were less represented.

Measure

The Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R; Derogatis, 1994) is a 90-item self-report questionnaire that measures 9 dimensions of psychiatric functioning, including a Global Severity Index that measures overall psychological distress. The 9 dimensions are Somatization (distress arising from perceptions of bodily dysfunction), Obsessive-Compulsive (unwanted and persistent thoughts, impulses, and actions), Interpersonal Sensitivity (feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, particularly during interpersonal interactions), Depression (clinical depression), Anxiety (general signs of anxiety, i.e., nervousness, panic attacks, apprehension), Hostility (thoughts, feelings, or actions that are characteristic of negative affect and anger), Phobic Anxiety (persistent fear of a specific person, place, object, or situation), Paranoid Ideation (paranoid behavior and thinking, i.e., suspiciousness, delusions), and Psychoticism (mild interpersonal alienation to dramatic psychosis). Another scale includes items that load on several dimensions (i.e., Additional Items). The psychometric properties of the SCL-90-R are adequate (see Derogatis, 1994), particularly as a general measure of distress (i.e., the Global Severity Index, see Derogatis, 1997). Researchers have consistently found gender differences in SCL-90-R raw scores, thus scores should be interpreted separately for men and women (Derogatis, 1997).

Undergraduate Normative Sample

We obtained undergraduate SCL-90-R normative data from a study by Todd, Deane, and McKenna (1997). That normative sample consisted of 435 undergraduates who were enrolled at a northeastern university and who reported no existing or previous psychiatric or psychological treatment. Separate norms are available for men and women. Most of the participants in the study by Todd et al. were students of psychology who were required to fulfill course requirements. The mean age of those students was 19.70 years (SD = 1.56), and 254 (58%) were women. The authors did not provide an ethnicity breakdown of the sample, but they reported that approximately 16% of students at the university were ethnic minorities, which is comparable with the 16% Hispanic and African American representation in the participants in our study.

Procedure

We obtained the data used in the present study as part of a larger study that focused on the assessment of motivation to study sports psychology. Most of the participants learned about the study through notices that were posted in the psychology department building and announcements in psychology class. A few athletes, who were also offered course credit, were invited to participate in the study during team meetings that were held on campus. Each athlete provided informed consent after the nature of the study, the benefits and risks of participation, and their rights of confidentiality had been explained to them. After the participants had signed the consent forms, they completed the SCL-90-R and several other questionnaires that were not pertinent to the present study.

Results

Comparison of Recreational and NCAA Athletes on Demographic Data

We conducted chi-square tests to determine whether recreational athletes and NCAA athletes differed in discontinuous demographic variables (i.e., ethnicity, primary sport, gender), and we used t tests to compare the recreational and NCAA athletes on the continuous variable, age. The results indicated that the groups were not significantly different in age (p > .05). However, they differed significantly in ethnicity, [chi square] (3, N = 136) = 9.01, p < .05, and primary sport, [chi square] (11, N = 136) = 41.30, p < .001. More African Americans were recreational athletes, and more Caucasians were NCAA athletes. In regard to primary sport, more recreational athletes were wrestlers, and more NCAA athletes were swimmers.

Comparison of Recreational and NCAA Athletes in Psychiatric Functioning

We performed two multivariate analyses of covariance tests (MANCOVAs)--one for men and one for women--to examine possible differences in psychiatric functioning between recreational athletes and NCAA athletes. The independent variable in the MANCOVAs was type of athlete (Recreational, NCAA), and the dependent variables were SCL-90-R scores. We used ethnicity and primary sport as covariates in the MANCOVAs because recreational and NCAA athletes differed significantly in those areas (see sections on Participants and on Undergraduate Normative Sample). We conducted separate MANCOVAs for men and women because separate interpretations of SCL-90-R scores are recommended for each gender (see Measures section). The results indicated that recreational athletes did not differ from NCAA athletes in their psychiatric functioning for men, F(10, 53) = 1.18, p > .05, and for women, F(10, 48) = 1.01, p > .05.

Comparison of NCAA and Recreational Athletes and the Normative Sample Group in SCL-90-R Global Severity Index Scores

We conducted a 2 (gender: male, female) x 2 (sample type: normative sample, athlete sample) analysis of variance test (ANOVA) with SCL-90-R Global Index scores as the dependent variable so that we could examine potential differences in the severity of psychiatric symptoms between athletes and nonathletes (normative sample). We combined the recreational and NCAA athletes because their SCL-90-R scores were similar.

The means and standard deviations for gender, sample type, and sample type by gender, are presented in Table 1. We found a significant main effect for gender, F(1, 567) = 11.66, p < .001, which is consistent with normative samples (Derogatis, 1997). We also found a main effect for sample type, F(1,567) = 8.84, p < .005. The interaction between gender and sample type was nonsignificant (p > .05). Thus, athletes demonstrated less severe psychiatric symptoms when compared with the normative sample, and females demonstrated greater severity of psychiatric symptoms when compared with males.

Discussion

Continued from page 1.

In the present study, the SCL-90-R scores of the recreational athletes were similar to the scores of the competitive NCAA athletes, which indicated similar levels of psychiatric functioning for the two groups. That finding supported the first hypothesis in this study. We combined the SCL-90-R scores for the two groups because they were similar, and we compared the combined score with those of the students in a general college sample (i.e., the normative undergraduate sample). In that comparison, the athletes showed lower levels of global psychopathology in comparison to the normative sample. That finding supported the second hypothesis.

The aforementioned findings were consistent with the contention that participation in athletics at college is not associated with increased risk of general psychological disturbance (Salmon, 2000). Indeed, undergraduate students in the present study who participated in athletics seemed to be less psychologically disturbed than were those in the general student population. It should be noted that the normative undergraduate group did not include those who reported that they were receiving psychiatric or psychological treatment (i.e., 6% of the original sample) at the time of the experiments, whereas the sample of athletes in the present study did not screen such participants. Therefore, the lower rate of global psychological disturbance found in athletes compared with the normative sample comparison group might not show the true differences that existed.

The relative influence of exercise and other moderating factors associated with sports participation in college students was not ascertained in this study, and the relationship of those factors is complicated. For instance, the positive relationship between exercise, a significant component of athletics, and mental health is well documented (Berger & Motl, 2000). However, the causal role of exercise and athletics in the improvement of mental health has not been established (Gauvin & Spence, 1996). Indeed, participation in athletics is associated with many factors that might positively influence mental health, such as increased social involvement (e.g., friendships gained from teammates) and greater self-esteem (Fox, 2000), and short-term improvement in mood brought about by an increase in serotonin levels (Jacobs, 1994) and in norepinephrine and opiod levels (Salmon, 2000). It is also possible that students with relatively lower levels of psychiatric symptoms are more inclined to seek out participation in athletics. The results of the present study did not allow for any definitive conclusions to be drawn on that point, and perhaps that could be investigated in future research.

TABLE 1. Means and Standard Deviations for SCL-90-R Global
Index Scores

                 Female           Male           Total

Group          M       SD      M       SD      M       SD

Athlete       0.56    0.45    0.48    0.38    0.51    0.41
Nonathlete    0.77    0.54    0.54    0.39    0.67    0.47
  Total       0.72    0.52    0.52    0.39     --      --

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Manuscript received August 30, 2002 Revision accepted for publication April 2, 2003

BRAD DONOHUE

Department of Psychology

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

KEVIN LANCER

YANI DICKENS

ABBY MILLER

ADRIA HASH

JEFF GENET

Department of Psychology

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Tracey Covassin is now at Shippensburg University. The authors thank Roger Barnhardt, Joy Calulot, Scott Forest, Lesley Volkov, and Lisa Weissman for their dedication to, and assistance in, this project.

Address correspondence to Brad Donohue, Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5030; donohueb@ unlv.edu (e-mail).