Mental health outcomes for teenage boys and girls following a youth sports development program including a mental health program

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Youth sports programs provide an opportunity to embed mental health and wellbeing programs to reach young people with mental health support. The aims of this study were to (a) examine mental health outcomes from a youth sports program including a mental health program (Life-Fit-Learning) in adolescent boys and girls, and (b) among the larger cohort of adolescent boys, to examine whether partial or full completion of Life-Fit-Learning yielded different outcomes for boys within healthy and high-risk ranges for anxiety, depression and behavioral concerns. Participants were 503 adolescents between 12 and 16 years of age (M age = 13.36; 416 boys; 87 girls) who completed both pre- and post-program mental health assessments, and a youth rugby league program including an online and on-field mental health program (Life-Fit-Learning). From pre- to post-program for boys in high-risk ranges, anxiety and depression declined but not to within healthy ranges but did so for behavioral concerns regardless of partial or full completion of Life-Fit. Full compared to partial completion of Life-Fit was required for improvements in depression for boys within the healthy range and for improvements in self-satisfaction for boys overall. Declines in anxiety were observed in girls in high-risk ranges but there were no improvements in girls’ depression, behavioral concerns or self-satisfaction. Increasing the focus on anxiety and depression may be important for strengthening outcomes in high-risk boys and incentivizing completion of mental health programs may be important for improvements in boys’ depression and self-satisfaction in general. Programs may need to be tailored to girls needs to improve outcomes.