Researchers at The Podium Institute have found that young people with poor mental health are more likely to get injured playing sport. Those injuries may be more severe and take longer to recover than in mentally healthy young people.

The study also found that young athletes who do get injured playing sport, are at an increased risk of experiencing mental health difficulties. This is not the first time research has suggested this, but it is the first time this connection has been clearly established and quantified.

“There are so many benefits for your physical and mental health from playing and competing in sport.  Supporting young people to stay active during such a crucial developmental phase when lifelong habits are formed, is really important. We want to understand more about the mechanisms linking injury and mental health and, in particular, to develop information to support young athletes’ mental health while they are injured.”

The study highlights the need for mental health to be integrated into routine sports medicine practice, and that regular psychological check-ins, early intervention, better education and long-term monitoring should become standard in youth sport. Such measures could improve both the physical recovery and emotional wellbeing of young athletes.

About the study

The systematic review and meta-analysis was published in Sports Medicine under the title Bidirectional Relationship Between Mental Health and Sports Injury in Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis, on 13 January 2026. It examined research involving 221,095 athletes aged 10 to 24 years old, covering all levels of sport and all types of injuries, from minor strains to more serious conditions. It included quantitative studies that assessed mental health and wellbeing alongside injury outcomes, offering a comprehensive picture of how the two are linked. 

Almost half of sports injury-related A&E visits are for children and adolescents aged 0–19 years old; 14-year-old boys, and 12-year-old girls having the highest rates. The concentration of injuries in early adolescence is unusually high compared with many other age brackets and almost half of all mental health problems emerge before age 14, making it a particularly important window for prevention strategies and safer training environments.

About The Podium Institute

The Podium Institute for Sports Medicine and Technology, situated within the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford and directed by Professor Constantin Coussios, is the world’s first independent academic institute focused on the safety and lifelong health of youth and grassroots as well as professional athletes. Its purpose is to forge evidence-based changes in sport and physical education, and to develop innovative and scalable technologies to monitor, analyse and ultimately prevent sport injury across the 22 million adults and 3 million children who participate in sport annually across the UK, as well as the hundreds of millions who partake in amateur and professional sport internationally.

thepodiuminstitute.ox.ac.uk