Why the study?
Does participation in athletics improve the severity of psychiatric symptoms in undergraduate students?
Does participation in athletics improve the severity of psychiatric symptoms in undergraduate students?
Participation in collegiate athletics, whether recreational or competitive, is associated with less severe psychiatric symptoms compared to non-athlete peers.
Athletic participation may link to milder symptoms in students; leaves open causality, requiring longitudinal studies before practice change.
In the present study, the authors examined the severity of psychiatric symptoms in undergraduate recreational (noncompetitive) athletes (n = 64) and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA; competitive) athletes (n = 72). The results indicated that the 2 groups were similar in the severity of psychiatric symptoms. The recreational and NCAA athletes combined (n = 136) showed less severe global psychiatric symptoms when they were compared with an undergraduate control group (n = 435). The implications of the study are discussed in the context of those findings.
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Donohue et al. (2004) studied this question.
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