COVID-19 Implications on Student Athletes Occupational Engagement and Mental Health

Abstract

Occupational engagement in preferred activities has been difficult to obtain throughout the Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic for high school athletes with the disruption to high school sports. High school athletes utilize sports as a way to interact within their environment and engage in play which is a key factor for facilitating normative development. The purpose of this capstone project is to further understand if associated mental health outcomes exist in high school athletes due to limited occupational engagement within sports through self-reported measurements. This project utilized a cross sectional, mixed methods survey, from a convenience sample of 104 high school athletes in order to obtain student athletes perspectives regarding the impact of COVID-19 on their sport performance, mental health, occupational deprivation, and future collegiate goals/scholarships. This project used a chi square analysis with a linear regression to understand relationships between datasets. Statistically significant (p= .003) relationships were found between grade level and student's self-reported occupational deprivation. This study also found indications of other predictive relationships between factors such as limited playing time or different rules while participating in sports and student's self-reported negative mental health symptoms (r= 2.3). With limited research on COVID-19 in this vulnerable population, this study provides foundational evidence for the need to engage within preferred occupations for normative development in high school athletes and the need to address mental health in this population who undergo feelings of adverse mental health within circumstances out of their control such as the impact of COVID-19.