disabled athletes

Psychological variables that affect mental health are divided into useful and harmful variables. Useful variables are beneficial for improving mental health and quality of life, and increasing well-being, for instance, happiness, calmness, vigor, and mental toughness. Harmful variables reduce mental health, quality, and enjoyment of life, for example, negative mood states, anxiety, and burnout. This study aimed to predict psychological burnout based on mood states and mental toughness of elite athletes with physical disabilities. Participants have included 150 athletes with physical disabilities (77women; 73men) competing at national or international Paralympic sports teams (mean age=42.34 ±7.44y, mean experience=8.38 ± 3.19 y) that were selected in the random method. Participants accomplished the Athlete Burnout Questionnaire, the 32-item Brunel Mood Scale, and the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire. Stepwise multiple linear regression analysis showed that happiness (moderate negative power, 51%), vigor (weak negative power, 28%), fatigue (weak positive power, 22%), mental toughness (medium negative power, 57%), and confidence (weak negative power, 29%) were able to predict the total burnout of the athletes with disabilities. These findings are essential for psychologists since developing and increasing the useful variables and inhibiting or decreasing the harmful variables for mental health can prevent sports burnout.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between coaches’ leadership styles and sport emotions of athletes participating in the Bahrain 2021 Para-Asian Youth Championships. The statistical population of the study consisted of all athletes participating in the Bahrain 2021 Para-Asian Youth Championships including 750 athletes from 30 Asian countries. Using Morgan table, the sample size was determined to be 256 athletes. The research instruments included the Modified Sport Emotion Questionnaire (SEQ) and the Sport Leadership Scale (LLS). Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Pearson correlation coefficient, independent t-test and Friedman test in SPSS 23 software were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the leadership style of social support of sport coaches had a negative and significant relationship with the components of anxiety, dejection, excitement and anger of athletes’ sport emotions as well as a positive and significant relationship with the component of happiness. The authoritarian style of sport coaches had a positive and significant relationship with the components of anxiety, dejection and anger of athletes as well as a negative and significant relationship with the components of excitement and happiness (p≤0.01). Generally, by recognizing the psychological consequences associated with coaches’ leadership style, it is possible to help improve positive emotional states and control negative emotional states in athletes.