Mental health is a rapidly increasing topic in the field of sport psychology. As the relevance of athletes’ mental health has come to prominence through emerging research, there is a high demand for evidence-based practice in order to promote athletes' mental health and prevent mental disorders as well as maladaptive syndromes. However, there is currently no comprehensive overview available that highlights the empirical evidence for the constructs of mental health, illustrating the latest developments in research, or that highlights implications for future science and practice. The Routledge Handbook of Mental Health in Elite Sport delivers such an understanding and overview for this field, offering students, researchers, mental health professionals, applied sport psychologists, and coaches a state-of-the-art and insightful summary of science in the newly emerged field of clinical sport psychology and mental health in athletes. This thorough volume covers major current and emerging topics on mental health and mental illness (e.g., depression), subclinical syndromes (e.g., burnout), as well as a comprehensive overview of research on prevention (e.g., green exercise) and treatment of mental health disorders in athletes and will be a vital resource for researchers, academics, and students in the fields of sport psychology, clinical psychology, sport coaching, sport sciences, health psychology, and physical activity and related disciplines.

Mental Health in Elite Sport: Applied Perspectives from Across the Globe provides a focused, exhaustive overview of up-to-date mental health research, models, and approaches in elite sport to provide researchers, practitioners, coaches, and students with contemporary knowledge and strategies to address mental health in elite sport across a variety of contexts. Mental Health in Elite Sport is divided into two main parts. The first part focuses globally on mental health service provision structures and cases specific to different world regions and countries. The second part focuses on specific mental health interventions across countries but also illustrates specific case studies and interventions as influenced by the local context and culture. This tour around the world offers readers an understanding of the massive global differences in mental health service provision within different situations and organizations. This is the first book of its kind in which highly experienced scholars and practitioners openly share their programs, methods, reflections, and failures on working with mental health in different contexts. By using a global, multi-contextual analysis to address mental health in elite sport, this book is an essential text for practitioners such as researchers, coaches, athletes, as well as instructors and students across the sport science and mental health fields.

Athlete welfare should be of central importance in all sport. This comprehensive volume features cutting-edge research from around the world on issues that can compromise the welfare of athletes at all levels of sport and on the approaches taken by sports organisations to prevent and manage these. In recent years, sports organisations have increased their efforts to ensure athlete health, safety, and well-being, often prompted by high-profile disclosures of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse; bullying; discrimination; disordered eating; addiction; and mental health issues. In this book, contributors lift the lid on these and other issues that jeopardise the physical, emotional, psychological, social, and spiritual welfare of athletes of all ages to raise awareness of the broad range of challenges athletes face. Chapters also highlight approaches to athlete welfare and initiatives taken by national and international sport organisations to provide a safer, more ethical sports environment. As the first book to focus exclusively on athlete welfare, this is an essential read for students and researchers in sports studies, coaching, psychology, performance, development and management, and physical education. It is also a useful reference point for anyone working in welfare, safeguarding, child protection, and equity and inclusion in and beyond sport.

Health and Elite Sport is the first book to critically examine the relationship between participation in high performance sport and health outcomes. Drawing on theory and empirical data from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, developmental psychology, epidemiology, and physical education, the book explores the benefits and detriments of participation in elite sport for both individuals (athletes, coaches, spectators) and communities. Written by a team of leading international sport researchers, the book examines key issues including: Talent identification and young athletes Abuse in sport Positive youth development through sport Athlete health in periods of transition Health, sport and the family Health in professional sport The Olympics, Paralympics and public health Long term effects of participation in elite sport Highlighting the connections and contradictions between high performance sport and health, the book also discusses the clear and important implications for our socio-cultural, political and developmental understanding of sport. Health and Elite Sport is fascinating and important reading for all students and researchers with an interest in youth sport, sports development, sport policy, sports coaching, exercise and health, physical education, the sociology of sport, or the sociology of health.

The Routledge Handbook of Youth Sport is a comprehensive survey of the latest research into young people’s involvement in sport. Drawing on a wide diversity of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, policy studies, coaching, physical education and physiology, the book examines the importance of sport during a key transitional period of our lives, from the later teenage years into the early twenties, and therefore helps us develop a better understanding of the social construction of young people’s lives. The book covers youth sport in all its forms, from competitive game-contests and conventional sport to recreational activities, exercise and lifestyle sport, and at all levels, from elite competition to leisure time activities and school physical education. It explores youth sport across the world, in developing and developed countries, and touches on some of the most significant themes and issues in contemporary sport studies, including physical activity and health, lifelong participation, talent identification and development, and safeguarding and abuse. No other book brings together in one place such a breadth and depth of material on youth sport or the engagement of young people in physical activity. The Routledge Handbook of Youth Sport is therefore important reading for all advanced students, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in youth sport, youth culture, sport studies or physical education.

Now in its second edition, this book provides a focused, comprehensive overview of up-to-date mental health research, models, and approaches in sport, with expertise from global experts in the field. Mental health remains a widely growing area in the field of sport psychology, which requires expert guidance and care in promoting effective well-being for athletes, coaches and sport officials. Fully updated throughout, Mental Health and Well-being Interventions in Sport is an indispensable guide for researchers, practitioners and students wanting to understand and implement sport-based intervention processes. This important book adopts an evidenced based approach, discussing the context of the intervention, its design and implementation, and its evaluation and legacy. Exploring areas such as injury, rehabilitation, depression, eating disorders, verbal and physical abuse, and athletic burnout, this insightful volume dissects emerging research into straightforward accessible chapters. Offering a cutting-edge overview of the key issues involved in this burgeoning area, as well as example cases of how sport has been used in extreme environments such as prisons as a method to improve mental health, the book will benefit practitioners, policy makers and researchers. Written for newcomers and established practitioners across a variety of sports setting and contexts, the authors highlight the need for "another call to action" to support the mental health and wellbeing of all involved in sport. Presenting current research, theory and practice in the field, the text is an essential read for researchers, practitioners, and coaches to better understand sport-based intervention processes.

The Routledge Handbook of Elite Sport Performance is the first book to examine a broad span of performance and support issues in contemporary elite sport; including coaching, sports science and medicine, leadership and management, operating in different societies, living in the system as a performer, and future developments in the domain. The book is written by authors with elite-level experience, expertise, success, and status across individual and team sports, including football, NFL, track and field athletics, rowing, and rugby, in professional, Olympic, and other elite domains. The book also considers the integration of systems at micro to macro levels, from working with individual athletes to developing national organisations and policy, and features in-depth case studies from real sport throughout. This is an essential reference for any researcher or advanced student with an interest in elite sport or applied sport science, from sport injury and sport psychology to sports coaching and sport policy. It is also an invaluable resource for coaches, managers, administrators, and policy-makers working in elite sport, offering them a "breadth first" guide to how and why specialists may work together for maximum effect.