ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the potential threat to athlete psychosocial health posed by sport-related transitions. It provides an overview of key concepts related to life transition in adults. In the context of human functioning, transitions are planned or unplanned life-altering events that cause people to re-evaluate their sense of self and assumptions about the world. Within sport, a transition is “a turning phase in athletes’ development that brings a set of demands and requires adequate coping processes in order to continue athletic and parallel careers, such as education or work”. As opposed to some of the other threats to athlete psychosocial health, such as abuse, transitions are not inherently debilitative. In addition to individuals’ perception of the transition, the model specifies two other factors mediating the effect of transition type on individual adaptation: pre- and post-transition environmental characteristics, and characteristics of the individual.
