PLAYwithHEART: PLAY With Happiness, Engagement, Acceptance, and Respect With Your Team

University of Coimbra

Status: Active, not recruiting

Conditions: Adolescents; Athletes

Treatments: Behavioral: PLAYwithHEART Programme for adolescent athletes

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04850872

CINEICC

SFRH/BD/143410/2019 (Other Grant/Funding Number)

Details and patient eligibility

About

This investigation aims to apply and test the feasibility of a structured Program for young athletes. PLAYwithHEART is a program for promoting acceptance and cooperation skills in adolescent athletes. This group application program comprises eight weekly sessions and aims to decrease levels of sport anxiety, and increase the psychological quality of life of young athletes, by promoting skills inherent to an affiliation mentality (mindfulness, acceptance, and compassion), as an alternative to a social ranking mentality (based on maladaptive processes, such as shame and self-criticism), to deal with the challenges and demands of the sport context.

Full description

The sample will include young athletes of different sports with ages ranged 12 to 18 years old. The principal investigator will recruit participants through contact with different sports clubs in Portugal. Athletes who demonstrate interest will go through a Screening interview (previously authorized by your legal guardian) by a licensed psychologist that aims explain the structure and arms of the investigation, to collect demographic data, and whether the athlete meets the inclusion criteria for the study. Athletes who meet the inclusion criteria and demonstrate interest in participating in the study, will sign an informed consent.

All ethical requirements for research with humans are guaranteed. Afterwards, participants will be allocated in two groups (experimental and control group). Additionally, the experimental group will enroll in the PLAYwithHEART programme, also provided by a licensed psychologist and a co-therapist.

Both groups will concurrently complete a protocol of self-report measures (to measure: a) psychological processes; b) quality of life and sports anxiety. These assessments will occur in three different times: before the start of the PLAYwithHEART programme (M0), after the final session of the programme (M1), and 6 months after that (M2).

Enrollment: 50 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 12 to 18 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• adolescent competitive athletes
• presentation of the informed consent signed by the participant and respetive legal guardian
• availability to participate in the 8 sessions of the PLAYwithHEART Programme
• inexistence of cognitive difficulties that interfere in completing self-response measures
• not being under psychological / psychiatric appointments

Exclusion criteria

• no presentation of the informed consent signed by the participant and respetive legal guardian
• unavailability to participate in the 8 sessions of the PLAYwithHEART Programme
• existence of cognitive difficulties that interfere in completing self-response measures
• being under psychological / psychiatric appointments

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

50 participants in 2 patient groups

Experimental

Experimental group

Description:

PLAYwithHEART Programme is a manualized mindfulness, acceptance, and compassionate-based group intervention for adolescent competitive athletes. It included 8 weekly group sessions, 45 minutes each, run in small groups (ranging from 8 to 12 participants). Participants of this group complete also self-report measures.

Treatment:

Behavioral: PLAYwithHEART Programme for adolescent athletes

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Participants of control group do not receive the intervention Programme (PLAYwithHEART), nor any other program, and only complete self-report measures.