Coping with Sports Injuries

Book excerpt: When an athlete gets injured, great attention is paid to understanding the physical nature of their injury and putting in place strategies for rehabilitation. Too often though, the psychological effects of injury are not even considered, yet an injury can have a profound psychological effect on the well-being of the athlete. To attend only to the physical effects is to leave a part of the athlete effectively untreated. In this text, Jane Crossman brings together the leading researchers from sports science and medicine to firstly discuss and explain the ways in which the athlete is psychologically affected by injury, before going on to provide effective and proven methods for helping the athlete through this difficult period.