Researchers at the Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford have published the first systematic review to quantify the two-way relationship between sports injuries and mental health in adolescent athletes.
The study, released on 13th January 2026, reports that young people with poor mental health are at greater risk of injury, experiencing more severe injuries, and taking longer to recover than mentally healthy peers. At the same time, young athletes who sustain injuries are at increased risk of reporting mental health difficulties. Although this connection has been suggested before, the authors say this is the first time it has been clearly established and quantified.
The systematic review and meta-analysis examined research involving 221,095 athletes aged 10 to 24 years old, covering all levels of sport and all types of injuries, from minor strains to more serious conditions. It included quantitative studies that assessed mental health and well-being alongside injury outcomes, offering a comprehensive picture of how the two are linked. The concentration of injuries in early adolescence is unusually high compared with many other age brackets and almost almost half of all mental health problems emerge before age 14,[1] making it a particularly important window for prevention strategies and safer training environments.
Almost 50% of all sport injury A&E visits in the UK involve children and adolescents, with 10–14-year-olds the most likely to be injured, followed closely by those aged 15–19.
| Children and adolescents aged 0 – 19 years accounted for almost half (47.4%) of sports injury-related emergency department attendances and almost one-quarter (23.5%) of sports injury-related admissions for all ages. The highest rates of attendance occurred at 14 years for boys (68.22 per 1000 person-years) and 12 years for girls (33.72 per 1000 person-years).[2] |
Published in Sports Medicine under the title Bidirectional Relationship Between Mental Health and Sports Injury in Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis, the findings highlight the need for mental health to be integrated into routine sports medicine practice. The authors propose that regular psychological check-ins, early intervention, better education, and long term monitoring should become standard in youth sport. They say such measures could improve both the physical recovery and emotional wellbeing of young athletes.
“Our findings also suggest that psychosocial factors may play an important role in how sports injuries influence mental health in young athletes. By focusing future research and interventions on factors such as identity and peer support, we may be able to improve recovery, build resilience, and support long-term participation overall.” – Athena Chow, First author and DPhil Candidate at the Department of Experimental Psychology – University of Oxford.
Dr Catherine Wheatley, co-author of the study and Mental Health and Psychological Wellbeing Manager at Podium Analytics explained: ”There are so many benefits for your physical and mental health from playing and competing in sport. Supporting young people to stay active during such a crucial developmental phase when lifelong habits are formed, is really important. We want to understand more about the mechanisms linking injury and mental health and in particular, to develop information to support young athletes’ mental health while they are injured.”
The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology, situated within the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford and directed by Professor Constantin Coussios, is the world’s first independent academic institute focused on the safety and lifelong health of youth and grassroots as well as professional athletes. Its purpose is to forge evidence-based changes in sport and physical education, and to develop innovative and scalable technologies to monitor, analyse and ultimately prevent sport injury across the 22 million adults and 3 million children who participate in sport annually across the UK, as well as the hundreds of millions who partake in amateur and professional sport internationally.
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[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279550690_Kessler_RC_Berglund_P_Demler_O_Jin_R_Merikangas_KR_Walters_EE_Lifetime_prevalence_and_age-of-onset_distributions_of_DSM-IV_disorders_in_the_National_Comorbidity_Survey_Replication_Arc_Gen_Psychiatry_6
[2] Results on sports-related injuries in children from NHS emergency care dataset Oxfordshire pilot: an ecological study