Loneliness, depressive symptoms, and emotion regulation of student-athletes

Objectives: Loneliness has strong links to depression, particularly for young people (Pearce et al., 2021). Within sport psychology li le is known about loneliness, especially in relation to mental health. This research investigated student-athletes’ loneliness prevalence, differences by depressive symptom severity, and whether emotion regulation strategies predicted loneliness.
Design: An exploratory, cross-sectional design.
Methods: 242 participants (M age = 19.59 years) were recruited from UK universities and completed the UCLA loneliness scale-3, Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (depression subscale), Sport Mental Health Continuum Short-Form, and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire between October to December 2022. Analysis included a one-way ANOVA (loneliness differences by depression category) and hierarchical regression (emotion regulation predicting loneliness).
Results: Overall, student-athletes experienced loneliness (M = 42.31). Participants reporting no depressive symptoms experienced significantly less loneliness (M = 38.27) compared to those experiencing mild (M = 48.46), moderate (M = 48.44), or severe (M = 51.43) symptoms, F (4, 242) = 16.14, p < .001. Controlling for depressive symptoms and wellbeing, (F (2,239) = 53.02, p < .001, R2 = .31), reappraisal (β = -.16, p = .003) and suppression (β = .28, p < .001) predicted loneliness, contributing a further 7.6% variance (F (2,237) = 36.80, p < .001).
Conclusion: Applied practitioners should consider athletes’ loneliness, and reappraisal’s role as a protective factor. Student-athletes experiencing depressive symptoms and using suppression may be at greater risk for loneliness than those without depressive symptoms and using reappraisal. Future research should expand beyond cross-sectional designs to explore effective interventions to reduce loneliness.