Emotional Abuse In Sports Essay

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Many children and adolescent are redirected to organized sport to support their psycho-social developments. At the beginning of adolescence period and in some sports in childhood, the discovered talents start to train excessively to specialize in sport and to compete at elite level at the end of their adolescence period and in young adulthood (Fraser-Thomas Cote & Deakin, 2008). Certainly in pursuit of this path, coaches have critical influence on athletes. According to a study that reported in a book of Coaching Association of Canada, 96 % of the young athletes stated that coaches have greater effect on their behaviors than parents, peers or teachers. In addition, Tomlinson and Yorgancı (1997) found that the coach’s decisional powers can exceed …show more content…

In addition to those forms, although, it is widely searched topic in women studies (Adams, Sullivan, Bybee & Greeson, 2008; Sanders, 2015), there is no study on economic abuse in sport environment. Emotional abuse is defined as any non-contact behaviors that can harm the psychological well-being of a person (Stirling & Kerr, 2008; 2009). The examples for emotional abuse in sport environment can be belittling comments, humiliation, showing aggression without contacting the athlete (e.g. throwing equipment), intentionally denial of attention or support, expulsion from training/competition, forcing athlete to compete or train before rehabilitation period completed after injury (Stirling, 2009; Stirling, Bridges, Cruz & Mountjoy, 2011). According to a survey conducted with 4597 people in the United Kingdom, 75 % of the respondents experienced emotionally harmful behaviors such as being humiliated, shouted, threatened with being thrown out of the club, criticised about looks /weight and so on (Alexander, Stafford & Lewis, 2011). Gervis and Dunn (2004) had interviews with 12 elite children athletes to explore their experiences with emotionally abusive coaching behaviors. All the participants stated that they experienced at least seven of abusive behaviors namely; shouting, belittling, threathining, humiliating, scapegoating, ignoring, rejecting, isolating. Physical abuse is an