Playing Team Sports Can Improve Children’s
Mental Health
A 2022 study published in PLOS ONE that explored how playing team
sports can improve mental health of children and adolescents found
remarkable results. Participation in organized team sports leads to the
following changes among the study’s 11,235 children aged 9 to 13:
• 10% lower anxious/depressed scores
• 19% lower withdrawn scores
• 17% lower social problems scores
• 17% lower thought problems scores
• 12% lower attention problems scores
In addition, the study found a 20% lower rule-breaking-behavior score
in team sport participants compared with children with no
participation in sports. Playing team sports helped children become
more confident, social, inquisitive, respectful, and engaged. Working to
achieve a shared goal combined with physical activity instills at an
early age the values of teamwork, camaraderie, and fitness.
Conversely, participation exclusively in individual sports, such as
tennis or wrestling, can lead to more mental health challenges for
children. While the physical benefits remain, the pressure to succeed
and the depression of losing fall completely onto the shoulders of a
single child rather than a collective team whose members can support
and uplift one another after a disappointing day.
Sport and performance psychologists are uniquely qualified to help
children—especially children who do not play team sports—better
respond to disappointment or depression when they fall short of their
own expectations. Through mental skills training, performance
preparation strategies, and focusing techniques, sport psychologists
can ensure their patients are well-prepared for the challenges they
may face on the field or beyond.
Healthy Competition in Sports Can Help People Focus
According to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology that
examined the effects of competition on effort and memory, the
presence of a competitor during physical activity can result in faster
reaction times, an indicator of increased attention.
The study also found that competition had the opposite effect on
nonphysical memory tasks. While physical reaction times increased
with competition, memory recall and retention were damaged when
facing a human competitor.
As the study shows, healthy competition, even on simple or menial
physical tasks, can help us be more direct with our focus and attention.
Sport and performance psychologists can help their patients translate
that increased focus to nonphysical activity, sustaining those benefits
long after the patient steps off the field.
Life Lessons From Sports
The mental health benefits from playing sports can be converted into
life lessons that will assist athletes in navigating the working world
and life’s other challenges. For example, playing team sports instills a
sense of cooperation and respect that can lead to tighter social bonds
outside of athletics. The breathing techniques a basketball player uses
at the free-throw line to calm their nerves can also be used before
making a presentation at work or school. And learning how to accept
defeat with grace builds mental fortitude and can help overcome other
disappointments that may weigh someone down otherwise.
Those who stick with sports through high school and college also learn
how to balance multiple responsibilities at once, and they develop
better mental toughness as competition becomes fiercer. Because of
this discipline in sports, former student-athletes tend to report that
they live more fulfilling lives after school than their non-athlete
counterparts.
