ArticleEuropean archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience2023
Why do we climb mountains? An exploration of features of behavioural addiction in mountaineering and the association with stress-related psychiatric disorders.
Article in European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- What factors explain extreme sport participation? A systematic review.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2024Pooled it
- A cross-modal framework for evaluating the mental health benefits of urban and natural landscapes in sustainable cities: an empirical study based on undergraduate students.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- An empirical study on the relationship between state anxiety, acute mountain sickness, oxygen saturation, and rating of perceived exertion among graduate students during high-altitude mountaineering.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Medical, subjective and objective forms of exercise dependence and the role of learning, cognitive and emotional biases.Journal of health psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Stability of exercise addiction symptoms and co-occurring mental disorders - a follow-up study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Cultivating grit among college students: a comparative study between traditional physical education and outdoor education.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Into the wild: uncertain frontiers and sustainable human-nature interactions.Frontiers in sociology · 2024Review
- Differential Magnitude of Resilience between Emotional Intelligence and Life Satisfaction in Mountain Sports Athletes.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Treatment of negative symptoms in schizophrenia: a challenge for clinical research.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2023Article
- Exercise addiction: A narrative overview of research issues.Dialogues in clinical neuroscience · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Common knowledge implies that individuals engaging in outdoor sports and especially in regular and extreme mountaineering are exceptionally healthy and hardened. Physical activity in outdoor environments has a positive effect on physical and mental health. However, regular and/or extreme mountaineering might share similarities with behavioural addictions and could thus also have a negative impact on health. In this cross-sectional web-based questionnaire study, we collected data on exercise and mountaineering addiction (Exercise Addiction Inventory; original and adapted version for mountaineering; Exercise Dependence Scale adapted version for mountaineering). Further surveyed parameters included mountaineering habits, Risk-Taking Inventory, Sensation-Seeking/Emotion Regulation/Agency Scale (SEAS), resilience, self-perceived stress, physical activity in metabolic units and mental health. Comparisons were performed between individuals with symptoms of addiction to mountaineering (MA) and individuals without symptoms of addiction to mountaineering or sports in general (CO) using non-parametric analyses. We analysed data from 335 participants, n = 88 thereof with addiction to mountaineering (MA) and n = 247 control participants (CO). The MA group scored significantly higher with regards to self-perceived stress (p < 0.001) and included a significantly higher number of individuals affected by symptoms of depression (p < 0.001), symptoms of anxiety (p < 0.001), symptoms of eating disorders (p < 0.001), alcohol abuse or dependence (p < 0.001), illicit drug abuse (p = 0.050), or current and history of psychiatric disorders (p < 0.001). Individuals with MA showed higher values in all SEAS subscales as well as increased risk-taking (p < 0.001). Regular and extreme mountaineering can display features of a behavioural addiction and is associated with psychiatric disorders. Behavioural addiction in mountaineering is associated with higher levels of sensation-seeking, emotion regulation, and agency, as well as increased risk-taking.
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Registered trials
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