Abstract
Introduction: Sport officials are tasked with applying rules, maintaining fairness, and ensuring athlete safety. However, sport officials experience anxiety, burnout, and non-accidental violence, with the incidence of these events increasing worldwide. This has led to rising attrition rates among sport officials, with many sport organizations concerned for their operational capacity. The effects of anxiety, burnout, and non-accidental violence might contribute to or be indicative of sport officials' negative mental health outcomes. To develop a clear understanding of how sport officials' mental health is affected by their occupation, it is necessary to identify the mental health outcomes and predictors they experience, and to what extent. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify and examine the empirical research and policy documents surrounding sport officials' mental health.
Method: One thousand, two hundred six articles were identified across four databases: PubMed, Web of Science, SportDiscus, and PsycINFO. Next, a policy search was conducted on the respective international governing body websites from English-speaking countries for the 60 included sports. Following screening, 18 studies and one policy document met the inclusion criteria for exploring sport officials' mental health.
Results: Participants (N = 7,941) in the studies were mainly European male soccer and basketball referees. Most studies utilized quantitative inquiry (n = 15) rather than qualitative methods (n = 2) or framework development (n = 1). The research demonstrated that sport officials frequently experienced negative mental health outcomes and predictors including anxiety, depression, burnout, lower mental health literacy, and high levels of stigmatization towards mental health.
Discussion: These outcomes were influenced by gender/sex, age, and experience. There is a need to explore personal and environmental (including occupational) factors that cause or contribute to sport officials' mental health symptoms and disorders.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1436149 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Sports and Active Living |
| Volume | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 29 Jul 2024 |
Bibliographical note
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these termsFunder
The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.SSHRC Partnership Development Grant #890-2021-0004.
Funding
The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. SSHRC Partnership Development Grant #890-2021-0004.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada | 890-2021-0004 |
Keywords
- referee
- mental illness
- well-being
- sport policy
- health
