ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces The Routledge Handbook of Clinical Sport Psychology, providing an overview of the emerging field of clinical sport psychology and a description of the book’s principal sections and individual chapters. Awareness of athletes’ psychological functioning has grown significantly over the past two decades, with major sport institutions and organizations committing resources to athlete mental health and psychological well-being. Thanks to the increased focus on clinical concerns within sport psychology, the challenges facing individuals who live and work in sport and performance contexts have begun to receive the much-needed attention. Clinical sport psychology practitioners and researchers have begun to illuminate the psychological challenges and stressors unique to sport populations. They have also, as this volume makes clear, emphasized the vulnerability of individuals who live and work in sport and performance settings to the range of mood, anxiety, and behavioral problems that all human beings face, along with many of the same social, economic, and cultural challenges that contribute to psychological distress in everyday life.
