Resilience, Optimism, and Burnout in Athletes with Disability

An athlete’s life is filled with challenges that must be faced. Adversity increases when the athlete has a disability that leads to different types of physical and psychological discomfort caused from coping with said disability, highlighting the emotional realm as the most affected. Consequently, knowing what abilities allow an athlete with disability cope with these situations is a priority. Therefore, this investigation has focused on studying resilience, optimism, and burnout as well as how these constructs relate in a sample of 73 athletes with disabilities. Results show that athletes with disabilities who scored low on resilience and optimism presented higher scores on reduced personal accomplishment, being more at risk of suffering from burnout syndrome. It is suggested that developing intervention programs for athletes with disabilities could be important to help them develop resources and strategies to cope with stressful situations within sport and related to disability.