Former footballers are at lower risk of being hospitalised with depression, finds study investigating links with dementia

Former footballers are at lower risk of being hospitalised with depression than members of the public, a study investigating links with football and dementia has found.

Ex-professionals were approximately half as likely to be admitted for anxiety and stress-related disorders, depression, alcohol misuse, drug misuse, bipolar and affective mood disorders, while they were at no greater risk of suicide.

The findings have come from the Football's Influence on Lifelong health and Dementia risk (Field) study which said last year that former professional footballers were approximately three-and-a-half times more likely to die from neurodegenerative disease than the general population.

The latest research looked at mental health outcomes in more than 7,500 former professional footballers and around 23,000 members of the general population, and is published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

Consultant neuropathologist Dr Willie Stewart, honorary clinical associate professor at the University of Glasgow, who led the study, said: "This is the first and largest study to date to investigate the association between elite-level contact sport and risk of common mental health disorders after retirement in this way.

"Our findings show that, despite former professional footballers having higher death from neurodegenerative disease, they are in fact approximately half as likely to be admitted to hospital with common mental health disorders.

"This is important because, in recent decades, there have been suggestions that common mental health disorders and suicide are features of neurodegenerative disease in contact sports athletes. The results from Field would suggest this is not the case after all."

In an attempt to explain why the professionals were less likely to face severe mental health disorders, the study said: “One possible confounding factor contributing to our observations is that individuals pursuing a career as an elite athlete may have inherent health differences from the general population, the so called ‘healthy worker’ effect.

“In other words, conceptually, mental health issues might at some level serve as an impediment to pursuit of a career as an elite soccer player.”

The link between the impact of heading footballs and concussion and an increased risk of developing neurodegenerative disease has not been established, but Professor Stewart said last year: "What we have is more than enough evidence, adding up over the decades and right up to the FIELD study at the end of last year, which says there's a strong association between contact sports and development of dementia.

"And when we look at what is the common factor, exposure to head injury and head impact is the one thing that stands through.”

The study compared deaths of 7,676 ex-players to 23,000 from the general population while the sample was taken from men who played professional football in Scotland, and were born between 1900 and 1976.

They were five times more likely to die of Alzheimer’s, four times more likely to die of motor neurone disease and twice as likely to die of Parkinson’s.

The English, Scottish and Northern Irish football associations banned young children from heading a football during training following the report.

Children under the age of 12 are not allowed to head the ball, and there are restrictions in place around heading during training sessions for those aged between 12 and 17.