درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Little research has been carried out on the common symptoms and mental disorders in Iranian elite athletes. The purpose of this study was to identify the mental health problems in Iranian elite athletes as a retrospective study at the National Olympic Academy (NOA) of Iran. The present study is a cross-sectional and retrospective descriptive study which was conducted by evaluating the athletes' psychological documents. A total of 143 athletes (male, n= 83, female, n= 60) were analyzed from the population of elite athletes (n=240) who referred to the mental training and consulting center in the NOA during the years 2007-2021. The results showed that most athletes referred to the center to improve their performance (37.8%). Anxiety (27.3%), depression (16.8%), interpersonal problems (11.2%), impulsiveness (2.8%) post-traumatic stress (PTSD) (2.8%), sleep disturbance (1.4%) were the most common mental disorders reported by athletes. In addition, surveying the relationship between demographic characteristics and mental health issues revealed a relationship between gender and mental health problems; there was no relationship between other demographic variables with mental health problems. The results of this study illuminate the spread of common mental health problems in Iranian elite athletes over the last fourteen years. Screening and diagnosing psychological problems provide a better understanding of the application of appropriate psychological interventions and improving the mental health of elite athletes. Accordingly, future research may focus on better understanding of mental health problems reported in this study and studies them in a larger population.

The current study aimed to investigate that whether young people with mild intellectual impairments (II) having various levels of IQ have different physical fitness and body composition. Moreover, this study aims to answer this question that is there any association among IQ level, Body Mass Index, and physical fitness factors? A number of 1200 students from all Tehran’s special high schools were screened, and finally, 355 of them with mean age 24.6 ± 3.0 years, height 173.5 ± 6.8 cm, weight 78.6 ± 8.5 kg, and body mass index (BMI) 23.3 ± 2.8 kg/m2 were chosen to be included in the study based on including criteria. All participants had a mild II with the IQ range of 50 to 75 based on the Wechsler Intelligence Test. Participants' physical fitness was assessed by Eurofit special battery test. Body composition evaluation measured by Body Composition Scale. The results showed that there were significant differences in most physical fitness factors between males and females, except in dynamic balance and flexibility (P ≤ 0.05). There was a significant association between IQ levels with all physical fitness factors (P ≤ 0.05) except for flexibility. Different IQ levels were associated with physical fitness factors, so that II students with low IQ had lower physical fitness than those who had higher IQ. Practitioners should consider these differences when working with II people of different gender and different level of IQ.