Last decade of research in depression and concussion among athletes: a systematic review

Resumo

The present study aimed to consolidate the knowledge developed in the last decade regarding the relationship between affect and concussion in sports through a systematic review. A search in PubMed retrieved 3129 articles that dropped to 9 after exclusion criteria. Among this total, 4 (44%) of those studies were correlational, whereas 5 (56%) were quasi-experimental. Almost half, 4 (44%) had a sample of American football players which suggested low heterogeneity of types of sport. Those findings highlight the necessity of further research using other sport types samples beyond American football. Results also showed an association between depression and concussion followed by linear relations with anxiety, which reveals link between concussion and affect impairment in general. This study warns to the need for quantitative research in diverse kinds of sports, standardized measures and experimental designs that allow to infer causality between concussions, depression and other mood impairments.