Prevention of burnout and depression in junior elite swimmers

This chapter provides an insight into a prevention programme for burnout and depression specific to a target group of junior elite athletes competing in an individual sport discipline. The programme was part of an applied project called “Group coaching of selected athletes of the Bavarian Swim Association”, which was founded by the German Federal Institute of Sport Science. The project was conducted with junior elite swimmers in order to strengthen prospectively important factors and therefore help prevent the development of psychological problems. Results showed that athletes in individual sports are at higher risk for depressive syndromes. Therefore, junior elite swimmers were assumed to gain most from a preventive intervention programme. On the basis of vulnerability-stress models, various important factors have been associated with burnout and depression. These factors served as an evaluation indicator for the assessment pre- and post-intervention.