Psychiatric treatment preferences of sports psychiatrists for athlete-patients across competitive levels: a 2024 update
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives Only two small, prior studies ascertained psychiatric treatment preferences for athletes among sports psychiatrists. This study aims to build upon and update those results by describing comprehensive psychiatric treatment preferences and rationales for those preferences, across competitive levels of athletes, among practicing sports psychiatrists.Methods In 2024, organizations with large concentrations of sports psychiatrists were provided an invitation regarding an anonymous, web-based survey on psychiatric treatment preferences in working with athletes with mental health symptoms and disorders.Results 75 respondents who identified as psychiatrists or psychiatrists in training and who had treated athlete-patients within the past three years completed the survey. Top choices of psychiatric medications for athletes included: bupropion for depression without anxiety; escitalopram for depression with anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, and social anxiety disorder; sertraline for obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder; melatonin for insomnia; methylphenidate extended release osmotic-controlled release oral delivery system for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; aripiprazole for bipolar spectrum disorder (manic/hypomanic phase); lamotrigine for bipolar spectrum disorder (depressive and maintenance/prophylaxis phases); and aripiprazole for psychotic disorders. Regarding side effects, respondents reported being most concerned about sedation/somnolence, weight gain, and reduction in performance. The majority of respondents indicated they order a variety of medical evaluations at least as often or more often with athletes compared to non-athletes. The first choice of psychotherapy setting was individual psychotherapy, followed by family therapy, and then a tie between couples therapy and group therapy. The preferred type of psychotherapy was cognitive behavioral therapy followed by a tie among behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and mindfulness.Conclusion Sports psychiatrists tend to prefer medications that are relatively more energizing and less likely to cause weight gain. They undertake medical evaluations for their athlete-patients with relatively great frequency. Their preferred psychotherapy types are skills-based and can be completed within relatively short time-frames.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".