محمد واعظ موسوی

Little research has been carried out on the common symptoms and mental disorders in Iranian elite athletes. The purpose of this study was to identify the mental health problems in Iranian elite athletes as a retrospective study at the National Olympic Academy (NOA) of Iran. The present study is a cross-sectional and retrospective descriptive study which was conducted by evaluating the athletes' psychological documents. A total of 143 athletes (male, n= 83, female, n= 60) were analyzed from the population of elite athletes (n=240) who referred to the mental training and consulting center in the NOA during the years 2007-2021. The results showed that most athletes referred to the center to improve their performance (37.8%). Anxiety (27.3%), depression (16.8%), interpersonal problems (11.2%), impulsiveness (2.8%) post-traumatic stress (PTSD) (2.8%), sleep disturbance (1.4%) were the most common mental disorders reported by athletes. In addition, surveying the relationship between demographic characteristics and mental health issues revealed a relationship between gender and mental health problems; there was no relationship between other demographic variables with mental health problems. The results of this study illuminate the spread of common mental health problems in Iranian elite athletes over the last fourteen years. Screening and diagnosing psychological problems provide a better understanding of the application of appropriate psychological interventions and improving the mental health of elite athletes. Accordingly, future research may focus on better understanding of mental health problems reported in this study and studies them in a larger population.

Emotional abuse is one of the most common types of abuse in sports. However, due to the lack of awareness of its harmful effects and the hiding of this abuse in the shadow of success, less attention has been paid to it. Objective: Emotional abuse is a repetitive pattern of intentional and non-contact behaviors that is performed to control a person and is detrimental to their emotional, cognitive, or physical health. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of emotional abuse among semi-professional adolescent male football players in Mazandaran province. Method: the present study is cross-sectional. A total of 59 football players (aged from 15 to 18 years old) participated in the study voluntarily. Semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data and descriptive statistics and Spearman correlation coefficient were utilized at a significance level of 0.05 to analyze them. Results: The results showed that 37.25% of the participants have experienced emotional abuse such as humiliation, insult, ignoring, ridicule, etc. by the coach during their sports career which resulted in outcomes such as depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Conclusion: Based on the findings, it can be concluded that significant ratios of athletes have experienced emotional abuse that has adverse consequences and, in some cases, has led to quitting sport. Therefore, teaching athletes appropriate coping techniques reduces the frequency of common emotional abuse and protects them from it harm in the future.

A few second prior to an expected event, a systematic decrease in heart rate (HR), reflecting attentional processing is observed. Arousal variations however, restrain the interpretation of this decrement. The present study, aimed to investigate vigilance and arousal effects during a skilled performance separately, using separate measures for the two psychological states. HR and skin conductance level (SCL) were measured as an index of vigilance and arousal from 18 elite and 19 novices during 30 self-paced, self-initiated basketball free throws. Values of HR and SCL were calculated at half-second intervals from 10 s before to 10 s after each shot and were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA. This helped to compare pre-shot and post-shot patterns of physiological changes separately in elites and novices. In elites, there was a slow reduction in SCL prior to, and a rebound increase immediately following the shot. These were smaller for novices. Similar findings were observed when good shots were compared to bad ones. The value for rebound after good shots reached 8 times more than the pre-shot value. A sharp increase in HR, up to 40 bpm was found 4 second before the shot, which returned to pre-shot value after 2s for elites; this did not return in novices. HR in bad shots was higher than good shots. Results indicate that the SCL reflect arousal level at the time of task and its pattern of variations reflects skill level. Although, HR was lower in good shots, the pattern of variation in HR reflected physical requirements of the task. Results were compared to previous findings and discussed in relation to the hypotheses explaining arousal and vigilance in human behavioral performance.

The athlete's skills and psychological state often influence success in sports performance. The current study aims to explain the performance in paintball competitions based on cognitive resilience and cognitive regulation of emotion. The study participants included all paintball players participating in national paintball competitions (the year 2022), including 17 teams of 7 players, a total of 116 people. In order to investigate the psychological components affecting the athletes' performance, Conner-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) were used. After completing these questionnaires, IBM SPSS Statistics version 26 was used to analyze the data. Pearson's correlation coefficient and stepwise regression were used to analyze the data. The results showed a significant relationship between resilience scores, the overall score of cognitive emotion regulation, and the scores of 9 emotion regulation strategies with the players' performance in the paintball competition (P≤0.05). Players who achieved better results in tournaments, scored higher on the resilience factor. Also, players who achieved better results in matches had higher scores on emotion regulation strategies like self-blame, positive refocusing, refocus on planning, positive reappraisal, and putting into perspective, and lower scores on the acceptance, rumination, catastrophizing and other-blame strategies. This study showed that cognitive resilience and emotion regulation could be used as predictors of success and winning positions in paintball competitions.