ArticleBMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation2025
Intermediary role of mental toughness beliefs on the relationship between pain self-efficacy and fear avoidance in Elite injured athletes.
Article in BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Resilience in female athletes: a meta-analysis of levels, gender differences, and associations across psychosocial, performance, and health domains.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Cross-cultural translation, adaptation, and validation of the Chinese versions of the athlete fear avoidance questionnaire and fear of return to sport scale.BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionAthletes adopt different coping mechanisms with injury. Differences and links between fear avoidance (FA), pain self-efficacy (PSE), and mental toughness (MT) might affect injury outcomes.
aimTo examine the relationship between Fear Avoidance, Pain Self-Efficacy and Mental Toughness in injured elite and competitive athletes in Lebanon.
methodsThis is a cross-sectional study that included 172 athletes. Different questionnaires were used to determine the three pre-mentioned concepts. FA, PSE, and MT were measured using AFAQ-Athletic Fear Avoidance Questionnaire, PSEQ-Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, and SMTQ-Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire respectively. The data was collected and analyzed using IBM SPSS software.
resultsAthletes who practiced boxing reported the highest SMTQ score. Age and training hours predicted higher scores in mental toughness while athletes returning to practice within the last month showed higher PSEQ scores. A negative relationship was found between SMTQ and AFAQ (r = -0.47, p < 0.001) as well as between PSEQ and AFAQ (r = -0.44, p < 0.001). However, a positive relationship was seen between SMTQ and PSEQ (r = 0.36, p < 0.001).
conclusionBy incorporating insight into FA, PSE, and MT, sports professionals may enhance their ability to assess both physical and psychological predicaments of injured athletes.
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