Clinical Takeaway
Retired professional athletes from high contact team sports like 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 nature of retirement (voluntary vs. forced), social identity loss, repetitive head trauma exposure, and the presence or absence of strong post-career support systems. Early mental health screening and structured transition programs appear critical for this population.
#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 address cannabis medicine research and therefore cannot be meaningfully evaluated within that clinical framework. The title and abstract describe a systematic review of mental health outcomes in retired professional athletes from contact sports, which is unrelated to cannabis therapeutics. Please provide the correct study title or abstract if you intended to submit cannabis medicine research for clinical review.
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 identifies significant mental health burden among retired professional athletes from high-contact sports, a population that may increasingly seek cannabis for symptom management, yet the evidence base linking cannabis use to outcomes in this specific cohort remains sparse. The study’s mixed-methods approach helpfully captures both prevalence data and qualitative factors influencing mental health—including physical injuries, loss of identity, and social isolation—which are important contextual elements when evaluating why these athletes might turn to cannabis. Clinicians should recognize that while cannabis is sometimes self-selected by this population for anxiety, sleep disruption, and pain related to cumulative traumatic brain injury, the review does not address cannabis efficacy or safety in athletes with histories of head trauma, a critical gap given emerging concerns about cannabinoid effects on cognition and neuroinflammation. The presence of untreated or undertreated mental health conditions in this population underscores the importance of comprehensive psychiatric evaluation and evidence-based first-line treatments before considering cannabis as adjunctive therapy. In