Mood is helpful in everyday life. It is used to signal states of the self, direct attention by influencing our information search; take broader and more flexible approaches to problems and ready behavioral responses. However, if mood is not well regulated, it can lead to maladaptive behaviors particularly when they are of the wrong type, intensity, or duration for a given context. Indeed, mood disorders such as depression are now estimated by the World Health Organisation to be the greatest cause of disability worldwide. Accumulating research into affective dysregulation suggest that the prefrontal cortex plays a role in the regulation of mood. One common injury of the prefrontal cortex is concussion, which account for 70 to 90% of all brain injuries. Recent research on possible affective alterations caused by concussion suggests an association between disturbances in mood states and sport-related brain injuries. To date, although accumulating research details the affective outcomes following a concussion, most of the relevant evidence comes from cross sectional studies. This means that confounding factors such as time since injury or other variables may interfer in the relationship between concussion and alterations in mood states. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to fill an important knowledge gap regarding the mood health of athletes following a concussion. Specifically, by using standard questionnaires in psychological research and clinical practice, we assessed the mood state of asymptomatic athletes before and after a concussion. Twenty-one collegiate athletes (age = 20.81 ± 1.72) completed the Beck’s Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Profile of Mood States (POMS) at baseline, 170.93 ± 188.83 days prior to a concussion and 7.70 ± 8.06 days following concussion. Athletes actively participating in hockey, soccer, football, and rugby were recruited directly from university sports teams via the university sports medicine clinic. The attending sports-medicine physician diagnosed all concussions within 24 hours of injury. On the POMS subscales, athletes reported lower tension (p = 0.003) one week following the injury (5.43 ± 3.68) compared to preinjury scores (7.67 ± 4.39). Although the present findings suggest a concussion does not cause mood alterations so important as to change a patient’s diagnostic label, results from this study suggest that concussions could be associated with subtle mood alterations. Further, these alterations are selective to tension symptoms. The implications of the current findings are much broader, as they suggest that removal from play or pressure from coaches and teammates are likely not the only underlying factors that trigger mood changes in athletes, as has been previously suggested.

Mood Alterations Caused by Concussion in University Athletes