The protective role of psychological resilience in the recovery of children’s athletic sports injuries: a mechanistic study based on emotion regulation and self-efficacy

TL;DR

This study shows how psychological resilience helps children recover from sports injuries by improving emotion regulation and self-efficacy.

Contribution

The study identifies two chain mediation pathways linking resilience to recovery through emotion regulation and self-efficacy in injured children.

Findings

Baseline resilience was strongly correlated with recovery progress at 3 and 6 months.

Resilience improves recovery via cognitive reappraisal and reduces expressive suppression to enhance self-efficacy.

Cognitive reappraisal is a more effective mediating path than expressive suppression for recovery.

Abstract

This study explored the protective role of psychological resilience in children’s sports injury recovery, and verified the chain mediating effect of emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression) and sports self-efficacy, to provide empirical evidence for psychological intervention in children’s injury rehabilitation.

A total of 128 injured children aged 8–12 years were selected via cluster sampling from the school (March 2024–March 2025). A 6-month follow-up (T0: baseline, T1: 3 months, T2: 6 months) was performed with scales measuring psychological resilience, emotion regulation (child version), sports self-efficacy, and injury recovery progress. SPSS 26.0 was used for descriptive and correlation analyses, and Mplus 8.3 for longitudinal mediation and chain mediation models.

This study uses longitudinal mediation analysis to explore associative pathways, acknowledging unmeasured confounders may influence results. Baseline resilience was positively correlated with T1/T2 recovery (r = 0.407, 0.462; both p < 0.001). β = 0.196 is consistently reported for T0 resilience → T1 self-efficacy, but negatively predicted T1 expressive suppression (β = −0.179, p < 0.05); T1 self-efficacy was positively associated with T2 recovery (β = 0.372, p < 0.001). Key limitations include single-time-point measurements of resilience (T0 only) and self-efficacy (T1 only), which restrict causal inference. Two chain paths were significant: “resilience → cognitive reappraisal → self-efficacy → recovery” (indirect effect = 0.098, 95% CI = [0.065, 0.131]) and “resilience → expressive suppression → self-efficacy → recovery” (indirect effect = −0.029, 95% CI = [−0.048, −0.012]), with total mediation accounting for 37.9% of total effect. This study uses longitudinal mediation analysis to explore associations, acknowledging unmeasured confounders may influence results.

Resilience affects recovery via two chains: improving cognitive reappraisal to enhance self-efficacy, and reducing expressive suppression to boost self-efficacy. Cognitive reappraisal is a more positive mediating path and a core target for psychological intervention.

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