Stress Impact of COVID-19 Sports Restrictions on Disabled Athletes

Giovanni Fiorilli, Andrea Buonsenso, Nicola Davola, Giulia Di Martino, Francesca Baralla, Stefanos Boutious, Marco Centorbi, Giuseppe Calcagno and Alessandra di Cagno
Additional contact information
Giovanni Fiorilli: Department of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Molise, v. De Sanctis 1, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Andrea Buonsenso: Department of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Molise, v. De Sanctis 1, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Nicola Davola: Department of Economics and Management, LUISS Guido Carli, Viale Romania 32, 00197 Rome, Italy
Giulia Di Martino: Department of Motor, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome “Foro Italico”, Lauro de Bosis Square, 15, 00197 Rome, Italy
Francesca Baralla: Department of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Molise, v. De Sanctis 1, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Stefanos Boutious: Department of Physical Education and Sport Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 15772 Athens, Greece
Marco Centorbi: Department of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Molise, v. De Sanctis 1, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Giuseppe Calcagno: Department of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Molise, v. De Sanctis 1, 86100 Campobasso, Italy
Alessandra di Cagno: Department of Motor, Human and Health Sciences, University of Rome “Foro Italico”, Lauro de Bosis Square, 15, 00197 Rome, Italy

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 22, 1-11

Abstract: The stress impact of COVID-19 restrictions has put the adapted sports community at an unprecedented level of emergency. The self-report Event Scale—Revised (IES-R) questionnaire was administered to assess the level of psychological distress and emotive reactions such as intrusion (INT), avoidance (AV) and hyperarousal (HYP) following training and competitions suspension within a sample of Italian disabled athletes. A total of 146 self-selected volunteers were included in this study: 73 disabled athletes (aged 42.11 ± 13.70) and 73 athletes (aged 40.23 ± 13.73) who served as the control group. Only 8.22% of the disabled participants vs. 30.14% of athletes were affected by subjective distress. MANOVA showed significant differences in IES-R subjective distress for age, where the emerging adults had a higher level of stress than adults ( p = 0.031), and for the type of sport, where the individual sports group showed higher scores than the team sports group ( p = 0.049). Regarding the IES-R subscales, significant differences were found in INT and AV for age, where the emerging adults showed higher scores than adults ( p = 0.018 and p = 0.046, respectively). Significant differences were found in HYP for type of sport, where the individual sports group showed higher scores than the team sports group ( p = 0.014). The results confirmed a lower distress level of disabled athletes to adverse events than that expressed by athletes. Both sports engagement and the experience of living with impairment, overcoming structural barriers, could act as a buffer effect against stress due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Keywords: adapted sport; COVID-19 pandemic; psychological distress; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/22/12040/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/22/12040/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:22:p:12040-:d:680579

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().