TY - JOUR T1 - The psychological factor ‘self-blame’ predicts overuse injury among top-level Swedish track and field athletes: a 12-month cohort study JF - British Journal of Sports Medicine JO - Br J Sports Med SP - 1472 LP - 1477 DO - 10.1136/bjsports-2015-094622 VL - 49 IS - 22 AU - Toomas Timpka AU - Jenny Jacobsson AU - Örjan Dahlström AU - Jan Kowalski AU - Victor Bargoria AU - Joakim Ekberg AU - Sverker Nilsson AU - Per Renström Y1 - 2015/11/01 UR - http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/49/22/1472.abstract N2 - Background Athletes’ psychological characteristics are important for understanding sports injury mechanisms. We examined the relevance of psychological factors in an integrated model of overuse injury risk in athletics/track and field.Methods Swedish track and field athletes (n=278) entering a 12-month injury surveillance in March 2009 were also invited to complete a psychological survey. Simple Cox proportional hazards models were compiled for single explanatory variables. We also tested multiple models for 3 explanatory variable groupings: an epidemiological model without psychological variables, a psychological model excluding epidemiological variables and an integrated (combined) model.Results The integrated multiple model included the maladaptive coping behaviour self-blame (p=0.007; HR 1.32; 95% CI 1.08 to 1.61), and an interaction between athlete category and injury history (p<0.001). Youth female (p=0.034; HR 0.51; 95% CI 0.27 to 0.95) and youth male (p=0.047; HR 0.49; 95% CI 0.24 to 0.99) athletes with no severe injury the previous year were at half the risk of sustaining a new injury compared with the reference group. A training load index entered the epidemiological multiple model, but not the integrated model.Conclusions The coping behaviour self-blame replaced training load in an integrated explanatory model of overuse injury risk in athletes. What seemed to be more strongly related to the likelihood of overuse injury was not the athletics load per se, but, rather, the load applied in situations when the athlete's body was in need of rest. ER -