Clinical Takeaway
Retired professional athletes from high contact team sports such as football, rugby, and ice hockey face elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and cognitive concerns compared to the general population. Key factors influencing mental health outcomes include the circumstances surrounding retirement, history of concussion and repetitive head impacts, loss of identity, and availability of social support networks. Clinicians working with this population should proactively screen for mental health symptoms and address both the physical and psychological legacy of a high contact sport career.
#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 study does not appear to be cannabis medicine research. The title and abstract describe a systematic review of mental health outcomes in retired professional athletes from contact sports, not a cannabis-based intervention study. Please provide the correct study title and abstract if you need an explanation of cannabis medicine 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 substantial mental health burden in retired professional athletes from high-contact sports, with prevalence rates suggesting depression, anxiety, and substance use concerns warrant clinical attention in this population. While the mixed-methods approach strengthens understanding of contributing factors—including injury history, loss of identity, and social disconnection—cannabis use itself is not explicitly examined as either a coping mechanism or confounding variable, leaving an important gap for practitioners managing these patients. Notably, retired athletes may self-treat mood and pain symptoms with cannabis without disclosing this to their primary care providers, potentially masking underlying conditions or complicating assessment of true mental health trajectories. Clinicians should proactively screen retired professional athletes for depression, anxiety, and trauma-related symptoms while conducting thorough substance use histories that specifically address cannabis, recognizing both its appeal as self-medication and its potential to delay engagement with evidence-based mental health treatment.
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