Psychotherapeutic Applications in Elite Sport: Promoting Mental Health Among Athletes

Athletes suffer from clinical and subclinical mental health symptoms and disorders that affect their lives and their performance. Psychotherapy, either as the sole treatment or combined with other nonpharmacological and pharmacological strategies, is a vital component in the management of clinical and subclinical mental health symptoms and disorders in elite athletes. Psychotherapy includes individuals, couples/family, or group therapy and should address athlete-specific issues, which ought to be understood as normative by athletes and their core stakeholders. This chapter summarises controlled and non-controlled research on psychotherapy for elite athletes with clinical and subclinical mental health symptoms and disorders. Though psychotherapeutic interventions are similar to those with non-athletes, elite athletes can present unique challenges including diagnostic ambiguity, barriers to help-seeking behaviours, and altered expectations about services. Other personality factors sometimes associated with elite athletes can create difficulties and decrease efficacy over the course of treatment.