Exploring Existentially Based Interventions for Career Transitions in Sport

Date of Award

Summer 8-21-2010

Document Type

Doctoral Research Paper

Degree Name

Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology

Organizational Unit

Graduate School of Professional Psychology

First Advisor

Mark Aoyagi

Second Advisor

Peter Buirski

Third Advisor

Steven Portenga

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Keywords

Career transition in sports, Sport psychology

Abstract

From Introduction: Career transition issues have become of increasing interest in the field of sport psychology. Confronting the end of an athletic career is an inevitable reality that every athlete will confront in his or her lifetime (Baillie, 1993), regardless of level of competition (Kerr & Dacyshyn, 2000) or the amount of free choice related to the transition. Many athletes are able to cope with the effects of the transition process effectively, and see retirement as an opportunity to pursue new ventures and identity roles in life. However, retirement from sport can be an event that often results in various adjustment difficulties for an athlete involving emotional, social, financial, and vocational conflicts. Some athletes have reported experiencing effects such as depression, eating disorders, decreased self-esteem, increased suicidality, and substance abuse (Kerr and Dacyshyn, 2000). These types of distress can be exacerbated by the fact that many athletes fail to adequately anticipate and prepare for their impending transition (Baillie, 1993), and often embark on the retirement process without any formalized support (Stier, 2007).Typically, the role of a sport psychologist has been to assist in maximizing an athlete's competitive performance during the course of their career. However, as a sport psychologist's primary responsibility is to serve active competitors and athletic organizations, this tends to come at the expense of failing to provide follow-up care for the athlete as he or she retires from sport (Taylor, Ogilvie, and Lavallee, 2006). Since the 1970's, when the efforts of professionals in European sports organizations first received attention, there has been growing interest in academic circles about career transition

Copyright Date

7-26-2010

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. Permanently suppressed.

Rights Holder

Michael Wong

Provenance

Received from Author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

38 pgs

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