A recent study confirms what many have long believed: Playing team sports is good for kids’ mental health.
“There’s so many benefits of being on a team – and a sports team particularly – at a young age because you gain a sense of community, a sense of cohesion, a sense of togetherness, your social skills are better, you have to negotiate, you are relying on other people for your success,” Dr. Sue Varma, a board certified psychiatrist, said on Fox59.
Dr. Matt Hoffmann of California State University analyzed data on the sports habits and mental health of more than 11,000 children aged 9-13. The data was self-reported by parents and guardians who filled out a “Child Behavior Checklist,” which asked questions about signs of depression, anxiety or social withdrawal.
Children were broken up into four groups: kids who participated in team sports, kids who played both individual and team sports, children who played individual sports only, and children who did not play sports. Team sports included soccer and basketball, while individual sports included tennis, gymnastics, and wrestling. The results were published in the PLOS ONE journal.
The only category that led to a positive effect on mental health came from playing team sports. The top line results are that kids who played team sports had much better mental health than kids who played individual sports and kids who did not play any sports. Kids who did not play any sports had better mental health than kids who played individual sports.
Kids who played team sports scored 10% lower on anxiety and depression, 19% lower on measures of depression, 17% lower on measures of social problems, and 12% lower on attention problems as compared to kids who did not play any sports.
The study found that playing an individual sport led to a higher incidence of mental health issues compared to those who didn’t play any sports. Children who played individual sports scored 16% higher on the anxious/depressed scale, and 14% higher on withdrawn/depressed scale. They also had 12% more social problems, and 14% more attention problems.
Dr. Varma addressed this, saying, “…Individual sport participation perhaps because there is more pressure…you’re the sole person responsible for both the success and the losses, and that if you don’t do well, quote, a person feels like, ‘It’s all my fault,’ and there’s a lot of pressure, intense pressure. So we did see higher anxiety, depression, social withdrawal, and perhaps less of the benefits of social cohesion and social skills that we saw with the team sports.”
The researchers pointed out that other studies have shown that playing individual sports can be good for mental health and is even linked to less social phobia and symptoms of panic in young adults. They said more research is needed on that front.
Importantly, the study doesn’t assert anything about causality. There may be differences in the temperament between kids who go out for soccer versus tennis, for example.
Within the last year, Simone Biles made headlines for dropping out of the Olympics over mental health issues. The issue got a lot of attention when that happened, and interestingly, Biles cited an intense pressure to achieve perfection as one of the reasons for her mental breakdown. Other Olympic-level athletes, including gold-medal winning swimmer Michael Phelps, have spoken up about the pressure of competition.