Mental Health Outcomes in Female Athletes After Suffering a Long-Term Injury Across Neurotypes

This thesis focuses on neurological differences and how those affect the mental health outcomes after experiencing a long-term athletic injury. More specifically, I delve into neurodiversity and autistic women. For the latter topic, I explore how athletic identity affects well-being, in addition to the sport ethic, and phases of rehabilitation. Previous research has shown that more emotional and psychological distress come as a result of strong athlete identity, and that autistic people cope differently than allistic people. I conducted Pearson correlations for each of the mental health outcomes alongside belonging, athlete identity, time since injury, and autism quotient (AQ) scores and found significant negative correlations between AQ and depression, AQ and anxiety, and AQ and the sport mental health triage scale. I also ran multiple regression analyses and found no significant results. In the t-tests looking across race and sexual orientation, there was a significant difference between straight and non-straight participants in the triage scale, showing more concerns in the non-straight group. Themes from qualitative responses were categorized and totaled, reflecting a high incidence of emotional struggles, coping strategies, and mixed perspectives on how much control they had in the success of their rehab, or how involved they could be with teammates. These findings suggest there may be some variance in how different groups grieve the loss of an attachment object, but overall, demonstrate how difficult the rehabilitation process is, and the wide array of personal interpretations for their experiences.