Clinical Takeaway
Retired professional athletes from high contact team sports face elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and cognitive concerns compared to the general population, with career-ending injuries, concussion history, and abrupt transition out of sport among the most consistent risk factors. Social support, identity flexibility, and access to mental health resources appear to buffer against poor outcomes during and after the retirement transition.
#3 Influences on the mental health and well-being of retired professional athletes from high contact team sports: a mixed methods systematic review.
Citation: Vella Jordan D et al.. Influences on the mental health and well-being of retired professional athletes from high contact team sports: a mixed methods systematic review.. British journal of sports medicine. 2026. PMID: 40930571.
Design: 5 Journal: 0 N: 2 Recency: 3 Pop: 1 Human: 1 Risk: 0
This systematic review is not about cannabis medicine research and cannot be accurately represented as such. The study examines mental health outcomes in retired professional athletes from high-contact sports, which is distinct from cannabis-based therapeutics research.
Methodological Considerations:
- Self-reported outcomes — recall and social-desirability bias risk
- Cross-sectional design — causal inference not possible
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: To report the prevalence of mental health symptoms and influencing factors in retired professional high contact team sport (HCTS) athletes. DESIGN: Mixed-methods systematic review. DATA SOURCES: PsycINFO, Embase, Medline, SPORTDiscus and Scopus were searched in July 2023 and March 2025. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR SELECTING STUDIES: Studies that investigated mental health and/or influencing factors within retired professional HCTS athletes were included. Studies that were non-peer-reviewed, could not obtain full text, used secondary data or focused on non-elite/individual/low-contact sports were excluded. RESULTS: 85 studies were included in the final review, comprising 53 996 participants (females; n=247, 0.46%) from six sports (Australian Football League, Canadian Football League, football/soccer, ice hockey, National Football League and rugby). Prevalence ranges varied for each condition; smoking (0.9%-16%), depression (3%-49%), anxiety (4.3%-42%), cannabis use (5%-15.7%), adverse alcohol use (6.4%-68.8%), opioid use (7%-23.6%), stress (8.7%-26.9%), illicit drug use (10%-63.2%), anxiety/depression (10.2%-39%) and adverse nutritional behaviour (23.8%-64.5%). Of the studies including M and SD of validated scales, scores for depression, anxiety and sleep disturbance were equivalent to population norms, whereas mild or higher scores were reported for stress and adverse alcohol use. Concussion, pain, injury, neurological factors and declined physical function were shown to have a negative influence on mental health. Both negative and positive influences were observed for: athletic identity, psychosocial support, retirement autonomy, life events, osteoarthritis, retirement and cognitive function. 48% of studies had good methodological quality; however, most studies were cross-sectional, relied on self-report measures and lacked follow-up data and female athletes. CONCLUSION: Retired HCTS athletes experience high levels of psychological distress and adverse alco
🧠 This systematic review documents significant mental health burden in retired professional athletes from high-contact sports, identifying multiple contributing factors including repetitive head trauma, loss of athletic identity, and social disconnection. While the study provides valuable epidemiological data, cannabis is notably absent from both the review’s scope and the identified intervention strategies, making it difficult to assess whether patient-reported cannabis use for symptom management was documented or analyzed as either a confounding factor or potential therapeutic consideration. Healthcare providers caring for this population should recognize that retired athletes may self-manage depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance with cannabis, yet evidence for efficacy in post-concussive or post-athletic-career mental health remains limited and largely anecdotal. The complexity of causation in this group—involving neurobiological injury, psychosocial loss, and potential substance use patterns—argues for comprehensive assessment before considering cannabis as part of a treatment plan rather than as a default symptom management strategy. Clinically, this review underscores the need for structured mental health screening and
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