Psychological side effects of intense physical training on mental health of athletes

Abstract

Through long-term intense training, the athletes tend to suffer from psychological stress and physical burden, and deterioration of mental health. This paper aims to pinpoint the side effects of intense training on the mental health of athletes. A total of 216 athletes were selected to receive interviews and fill out a questionnaire. The data thus collected were analyzed in details. The results show that the mental health of the subjects was poor, with frequent occurrence of psychological side effects, under the pressure of intense training; the psychological side effects vary from person to person with the differences in gender, age, level, years of training, experience and fatigue state; the fatigue state had the greatest effect on psychological side effects. On this basis, the process-level intervention model was successfully adopted to mitigate the psychological side effects. The research findings lay the theoretical basis for reducing the psychological side effects of athletes under intense training.