| Concussions are gaining recognition as serious public health problems and are often referred to as the "silent epidemic" because the issues that result from them are usually not mild nor visible (e.g., impaired memory, increased mental health issues, etc.) (Hutchison et al., 2009; Mainwaring et al., 2014). Multiple concussions have been found to lead to severe and prolonged side effects including increased physiological markers of stress even after dissipation of subjective symptom reporting (e.g., heart rate variability (HRV); Abaji et al., 2016; Gall et al., 2004; Mainwaring et al., 2014), perceived stress, and decreased coping resources (Machulda et al., 1998). Although a large portion of the variance of athletic injury is due to the physical demands of training and competition, psychological distress is a reliable predictor of the occurrence of injury and health-related outcomes (Perna et al., 1998; Petrie, 1992; Williams & Andersen, 1998). Therefore, it is possible that interventions addressing stress responses and physiological processes may beneficial for sport injury prevention. In the present study, athletes with concussion participated in a brief mindfulness-based intervention (N = 6) or wait-list control (N = 6). Over 5 weeks, the athletes in the intervention group attended five 60-minute individual intervention sessions. All athletes participated in pre- and post-measures including an acute stress condition (e.g., exercise bicycle) while measuring HRV. Analyses showed that following the intervention, participants in the intervention group reported greater mindfulness than before the intervention. Compared with the wait-list control, intervention participants reported greater mindfulness. Implications for practitioners and researchers for improving mindfulness-based interventions for athletes with concussion and interdisciplinary work are discussed. |
