Dispositional Mindfulness May Have Protected Athletes from Psychological Distress During COVID-19 in Australia

Abstract

Promoting athlete wellbeing has become a priority in elite sport, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated the need for a comprehensive understanding of risk and protective factors. Existing sport research has not yet considered whether specific cognitive factors such as dispositional mindfulness and executive function may protect athletes against psychological distress. In a sample of high-performance Australian football athletes ( n = 27), we administered measures of dispositional mindfulness (MAAS), executive function (AOSPAN; eStroop), and psychological distress (APSQ) at pre-season, coinciding with the initial (2020) COVID-19-related sport shutdown in Australia. Measures of executive function and psychological distress were re-administered at the end of the COVID-19 affected competitive season in 2020. Athletes reported significantly elevated psychological distress relative to previous estimates of distress among high-performance athletes established in prior studies. Executive functions, including working memory and inhibitory control were not significantly associated with psychological distress or dispositional mindfulness at either timepoint. However, baseline mindfulness was associated with reduced distress at both pre-season (r = −0.48, p = .03) and end of season (r = −0.56, p = .004), suggesting that dispositional mindfulness may have afforded protective buffering against symptoms of distress. Correlation data alone does not establish a directional connection from mindfulness to reduced distress, and future research is required to elucidate this association and/or establish the mechanism/s by which dispositional mindfulness may protect against psychological distress in this population.

Does the practice of mindfulness reduce somatic symptoms and COVID-19-related anxiety? A community-based survey

“…A negative association has also been found with the use of maladaptive emotion regulation and with more specific COVID-19-related anxiety, suggesting that dispositional mindfulness may have afforded protective buffering against the distress caused by the pandemic. These results are in line with other studies assessing dispositional mindfulness in different populations during COVID-19 and provide new and strong evidence for the protective role of this personality trait during the pandemic (Conversano et al, 2020;Roemer et al, 2021;O'Connor et al, 2022).…”

On the within-person associations between mindfulness, stress, mood, and self-reported performance: A daily diary among elite Chinese athletes.

“…Psychologically, subjective stress can be viewed as a filter of biological indices and reflects the extent to which various biological stress makers have been activated by subjective experiences (Pace-Schott et al, 2019). Previous research demonstrated significant negative relations between mindfulness and perceived stress among elite athletes (e.g., Gustafsson et al, 2015; O’Connor et al, 2022). We found similar negative relations between state mindfulness and negative mood, which can be indicative of stress (Stone et al, 1993).…”

“…Mindfulness has been found to play an important role in alleviating the influence of stress among both elite (Myall et al, 2023) and nonelite (e.g., student) athletes (Petterson & Olson, 2017). Dispositional mindfulness is negatively associated with self-reported stress in elite and elite junior athletes (Gustafsson et al, 2015; O’Connor et al, 2022). In terms objective indicators of stress, salivary cortisol is widely used as a noninvasive biomarker of stress in sport and other contexts (A.…”

Effectiveness of Daily Mindfulness Meditation App Usage to Reduce Anxiety and Improve Well-Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…In a study on adults in Italy, lockdown isolation correlated with decreased mindfulness, and with that, increased distress and sleep problems [23]. However, people who score high on trait mindfulness or possess mindfulness skills have reduced stress and anxiety, suggesting that interventions to improve mindfulness have the potential to reduce anxiety related to COVID-19 and improve mental well-being [24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Current practitioners of mindfulness have reduced distress and GAD-7 scores [31,32], and two weeks of increased mindfulness training was found to reduce depression and anxiety, as was the increased frequency of practice [31].…”