Clinical Takeaway
Retired professional athletes from high contact team sports such as football, rugby, and ice hockey show elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and cognitive concerns compared to the general population. Key factors influencing mental health outcomes include the circumstances of retirement, history of concussion or repetitive head impacts, social support, and sense of identity beyond sport. Clinicians working with this population should screen proactively for both psychiatric symptoms and neurocognitive changes, particularly in those with a history of significant head trauma.
#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
I cannot write the requested explanation because this study concerns mental health outcomes in retired athletes from contact sports, not cannabis medicine research. The title and abstract contain no information about cannabis therapeutics or pharmacology that would be relevant to clinical cannabis medicine practice.
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
🧠 While this systematic review addresses mental health burden in retired professional athletes from contact sports, the findings have limited direct applicability to cannabis medicine practice unless specific studies within it examined cannabinoid use as either a treatment or risk factor for post-career psychiatric symptoms. The review’s mixed-methods approach helpfully identifies multiple contributing factors to poor mental health outcomes in this population, including traumatic brain injury, loss of identity, and social isolation, yet these complex, multifactorial conditions typically require integrated care that extends well beyond cannabis therapeutics alone. Cannabis is sometimes used by this demographic for pain management, sleep disturbance, or mood symptoms related to their athletic careers, but this review does not appear to evaluate cannabis as an intervention or confounder, which represents a significant gap given the prevalence of self-medication in retired athletes. Clinicians caring for former professional athletes should assess whether cannabis use is part of their current coping strategies and consider whether underlying mood or trauma-related diagnoses might benefit from evidence-based treatments before or alongside any cannabinoid therapy