Document is current

Article History

Accepted: 3 December 2025

First Online: 13 January 2026

Declarations

:

: Athena R.W. Chow, Mirela Zaneva, Layla Rashid, Constantin Coussios, Robert Hepach and Lucy Bowes are independent researchers with no affiliation to the study funder. Catherine Wheatley holds both independent academic affiliations and affiliations with the funding body.

: Ethics approval was not required for the collection, analysis and publication of the retrospectively obtained anonymised data for this non-interventional study.

: Not applicable.

: Not applicable.

: Data come from published papers that are publicly available online.

: The statistical code will be made available on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

: All authors contributed to the conceptualisation of the study. AC and MZ conducted the search and screened the articles with arbitration by LB. LR, AC and MZ extracted the data and evaluated the risk of bias. AC performed the statistical analysis and MZ reviewed the analysis for consistency. AC, MZ and LB drafted the manuscript. All authors critically reviewed the manuscript and approved the final version. AC and LB are the guarantors.

: At the conceptualisation and interpretation stages of this project, we engaged with experts in sports and mental health to leverage their expertise and experience working with young athletes. We have presented our findings at sports science events and conferences at the University of Oxford and Podium Institute, which were attended by athletes, sports representatives and members of the public, and we were able to use their feedback for this manuscript. To disseminate our findings to the public, we aim to write social media posts and blog posts outlining the main conclusions of our paper (e.g. on the websites of the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology and the Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology).