Mental Health and Psychological Constructs Related to Performance in Professional, Semi-Professional, and Competitive...

Mental health has become a fundamental component of the sports world. Although previous studies have addressed psychological aspects of women's soccer, no comprehensive review has mapped both mental health symptoms and adaptive psychological resources and psychophysiological markers in professional, semi-professional, and competitive adolescent women's soccer.

This scoping review aimed to map recent evidence from 2020 to 2025 on mental health in professional and semi-professional women's soccer including competitive settings for adolescents, identifying key psychological constructs, assessment instruments, and risk and protective factors within the competitive sport context.

Following the methodological guidelines of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR), a systematic search was conducted in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science. Thirteen empirical studies that explicitly assessed mental health dimensions in professional and semi-professional women's soccer players were included.

The most frequently studied constructs were psychological stress, competitive anxiety, resilience, motivation, and well-being. The main risk factors included intense competitive demands, accumulated fatigue, and performance pressure. Predominant protective factors were individual resilience, social support, team cohesion, and self-confidence. The most used instruments were validated scales including the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS), Sport Anxiety Scale-2 (SAS-2), Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 Revised (CSAI-2R), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), Sport Mental Health Assessment Tool-1 (SMHAT-1) and qualitative interviews. Resilience emerged as a central concept; although it was measured directly in only two studies, it emerged conceptually as a central theme in the evidence, and recent qualitative studies have highlighted the influence of the institutional environment and technical support.

The available evidence which is heterogeneous and limited to 13 studies points to a growing body of research on mental health in women's soccer, focused primarily on stress and resilience. However, significant gaps remain, including a lack of multi-season longitudinal studies tracking players across full competitive cycles, limited representation of Latin American and Asian contexts (one study each), the absence of position-specific analyses such as studies focused on goalkeepers and insufficient attention to positive well-being. Prospective and intervention-based studies are needed to develop a comprehensive understanding of mental health in elite sports and in competitive adolescent settings.