Clinical Takeaway
Retired professional athletes from high contact team sports like football, rugby, and hockey face elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and cognitive concerns compared to the general population, with repetitive head trauma and difficult post-career identity adjustment identified as key contributing factors. Social support, a sense of purpose, and proactive mental health resources during and after the transition out of sport appear to buffer against poor outcomes.
#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 does not concern cannabis medicine research. The title and abstract clearly indicate this is a systematic review examining mental health outcomes and influencing factors in retired professional athletes from high-contact team sports, which is unrelated to cannabis therapeutics. Please provide a cannabis medicine research study if you would like me to explain its clinical significance.
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 outcomes in retired contact sport athletes—a population that may increasingly explore cannabis for symptom management—the study itself does not examine cannabis use or cannabinoid therapeutics, limiting direct clinical applicability for practitioners considering cannabis-based interventions in this cohort. The identified mental health burden (likely including depression, anxiety, and cognitive concerns related to repetitive head trauma) represents a plausible clinical context where patients might self-select cannabis, yet the review provides no evidence regarding efficacy, safety, or drug interactions relevant to cannabis prescribing decisions. Clinicians should recognize that retired athletes constitute a potentially vulnerable population with both high symptom prevalence and possibly high cannabis use rates, yet the lack of cannabis-specific outcome data means treatment decisions must rely on general population evidence while accounting for individual trauma history, possible chronic pain, and medication interactions. The practical takeaway is to screen systematically for mental health symptoms and cannabis use patterns in retired contact sport athletes, document cumulative injury burden and neurological sequelae, and