The Role of Challenge and Threat States in the Mental Health and Performance of Youth Academy Football Players

Within the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (TCTSA), on approach to motivated performance situations, demand and resource appraisals are deemed to influence sporting performance; where perceived demands outweigh perceived resources a threat state results, debilitating performance. Where perceived resources outweigh perceived demands, a challenge states results, facilitating performance. Considering the theories of stress which informed the TCTSA, it is plausible the TCTSA could be extended to explain athlete mental health. Owed to the stressful nature of football academy environments and the early age of onset of mental health problems, youth academy players represent a suitable sample within which to examine relationships between stress and mental health. Thus, the aim of this thesis was to examine longitudinal change in psychological demands, resources, and mental health in youth academy football players, to explore how changes in psychological demands and resources relate to changes in mental health, and to explore how changes in psychological demands, resources, and mental health relate to football performance. Psychometric and performance data were collected from players on six occasions over the course of 32-months, constituting three complete football seasons. Data were collected towards the start and towards the end of each season. Change analyses indicated that demand and resource appraisals and anxiety symptom frequency tended to increase during a season and over time. Perceived autonomy and competence tended to decrease during seasons and changes in perceived relatedness were mixed. PDP players experienced worsening mental health during seasons, in contrast to FP players who experienced improving mental health. Regarding the relationships between changing variables, the TCTSA model consistently explained significant proportions of variance in changes in mental health variables but failed to explain significant proportions of variance in football performance. As the longest and largest study of youth athlete mental health, this thesis makes a considerable, original contribution to the extant literature as it evidences how psychological demands, resources and mental health are related and may change over time in youth athletes. Furthermore, applied practice recommendations are made regarding the psychological variables which could be targeted by interventions to facilitate mental health and sport performance.