| Exercise Addiction in Athletes |
| Paper ID : 1825-SSRC-13TH |
| Authors |
|
Roghayeh Afroundeh1, Hossein Teymuri Zamneh *2 1Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Department of Physical Education and Sports Science, Mohaghegh Ardabili University, Ardabil, Iran 2Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Department of Physical Education and Sports Science, Mohaghegh Ardabili University, Ardabil, Iran. |
| Abstract |
| Physical activity has beneficial effects on both the physical and mental aspects. However excessive and uncontrolled exercise can lead to physical, psychological, and social harm. Athletes have an extreme tendency to exercise to satisfy their psychological needs. This condition is called Exercise Addiction (EA). Several studies have reported that the ratio of EA in competitive athletes is higher than in recreational and non-competitive athletes. Exercise addiction is classified as a "behavioral addiction" similar to gambling, sexual relations or Internet addiction. Thus EA can be recognized as an uncontrolled and harmful behavior. The purpose of this systematic review was to analyze scientific articles on Exercise addiction in athletes and to compare and contrast the causes of its prevalence; For this purpose, a total of 19 articles were reviewed from PubMed/ Medline and Science Direct databases, most of which were comparative studies between athletes and non-athletes. The results of most studies showed that there is no difference between the ratio of exercise addiction between women and men athletes, but the study of Szabo et al. (2013) showed that men are more at risk than women. Regarding the type of sport, some studies have shown that individual sports are more at risk of sports addiction, and some have shown that team sports are more likely (Reche et al., 2018). Conesa et al. (2017) found that there is a positive correlation between motivation for exercise and sports addiction; this means that athletes with the highest levels of competition and motivation were more likely to be exposed to EA. It seems that the potential prevalence of the risk of EA in the athlete population is much higher than in others. In some cases, engaging in excessive and persistent exercise can lead to severe dependence on exercise and negatively affect their health (Brown et al., 2012). Despite this conclusion from the current study, these findings should be given serious consideration due to their addictive and destructive behaviors. In contrast, constructive exercise should be performed according to a carefully designed and planned exercise program by the athlete. |
| Keywords |
| Exercise Addiction, Physical Activity, Athlete |
| Status: Abstract Accepted (Poster Presentation) |
