Psychology

Psychology from a sports and health perspective

At GIH, psychology is about the scientific study of people's thoughts, feelings and behaviors from a sports and health perspective. GIH is, together with KTH, a National Sports University, and offers students lectures and expertise in sports psychology.

Education

The psychology subject at GIH is currently divided into two main categories:

• Sports Psychology
• Health Psychology

Sport psychology primarily includes performance psychology (sport psychology in English). Health psychology deals partly with the connections between physical activity, exercise and psychological health and motivation for behavioural changes linked to health (exercise psychology in English), and partly about stress and psychosocial health.

The subject of psychology is represented in most of the educational programs at GIH, but especially in the coaching program, the health promotion program and the master's program. Both sports psychology and health psychology are included in a number of different freestanding courses and there are also freestanding courses specifically focused only on sports psychology.

Research

Some examples of research areas in sports psychology at GIH:

• Psychological aspects in dance and aesthetic sports. Above all, studies in recent years have focused on perfectionism and how it is related to, among other things, motivation, disturbed eating behaviors, exercise environments and creativity.
• Psychosocial aspects related to sports injuries. This involves psychosocial risk factors, reactions during rehabilitation and evaluation of recovery from injury.
• Stress and recovery in the training process. Cross-cultural studies as well as studies with a large number of different sports have been conducted to map and understand overtraining syndrome and burnout in competitive sports. Recently, a number of studies have also been initiated that study the situation of sports leaders.

Examples of research areas in health psychology at GIH:

• The relationship between physical activity, exercise, fitness and psychological health. This includes, among other things, how physical activity, exercise and fitness are linked to depression, anxiety and cognitive ability. This research uses various population studies that are linked to registry data and thus provide unique opportunities to investigate complex relationships over the life course.
• Health psychology with a focus on behavioural change in lifestyle linked to health, stress-related health and work, within the framework of E-PABS, Center of Excellence in Physical Activity, Health Brain Functions and Sustainability. Here, the research deals with, among other things, motivation and driving forces for lifestyle changes linked to health and creating environments for sustainable behavioural changes in, for example, children and young people or adults in working life. Other projects in the field aim to study physical activity and mental health in schoolchildren and professionals, as well as methods for behavioural change of lifestyle behaviours.

Collaboration and partners

At the national level, there is collaboration with, among others, the Swedish Sports Psychological Association, the Swedish Sports Confederation and a number of special sports federations, the Swedish Football Association, the Swedish Gymnastics Association, Generation Pep, as well as other colleges and universities.

Internationally, collaboration takes place with internationally recognized researchers, at universities in Australia, England, Finland, Norway, Canada and the United States.

GIH's research in health psychology also collaborates with the Swedish business community regarding the above-mentioned studies of physical and mental health in schoolchildren and professionals.