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Suicide in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Athletes

Overview of attention for article published in Sports Health, May 2015
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • One of the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#2 of 1,116)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (88th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
148 news outlets
blogs
2 blogs
twitter
56 X users
facebook
4 Facebook pages

Citations

dimensions_citation
99 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
159 Mendeley
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Title
Suicide in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Athletes
Published in
Sports Health, May 2015
DOI 10.1177/1941738115587675
Pubmed ID
Authors

Ashwin L. Rao, Irfan M. Asif, Jonathan A. Drezner, Brett G. Toresdahl, Kimberly G. Harmon

Abstract

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has recently highlighted mental health concerns in student athletes, though the incidence of suicide among NCAA athletes is unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine the rate of suicide among NCAA athletes. The incidence of suicide in NCAA athletes differs by sex, race, sport, and division. Retrospective cohort study. Level 3. NCAA Memorial Resolutions list and published NCAA demographic data were used to identify student-athlete deaths and total participant seasons from 2003-2004 through 2011-2012. Deaths were analyzed by age, sex, race, division, and sport. Over the 9-year study period, 35 cases of suicide were identified from a review of 477 student-athlete deaths during 3,773,309 individual participant seasons. The overall suicide rate was 0.93/100,000 per year. Suicide represented 7.3% (35/477) of all-cause mortality among NCAA student athletes. The annual incidence of suicide in male athletes was 1.35/100,000 and in female athletes was 0.37/100,000 (relative risk [RR], 3.7; P < 0.01). The incidence in African American athletes was 1.22/100,000 and in white athletes was 0.87/100,000 (RR, 1.4; P = 0.45). The highest rate of suicide occurred in men's football (2.25/100,000), and football athletes had a relative risk of 2.2 (P = 0.03) of committing suicide compared with other male, nonfootball athletes. The suicide rate in NCAA athletes appears to be lower than that of the general and collegiate population of similar age. NCAA male athletes have a significantly higher rate of suicide compared with female athletes, and football athletes appear to be at greatest risk. Suicide represents a preventable cause of death, and development of effective prevention programs is recommended.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 56 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 159 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 1 <1%
Unknown 158 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 21 13%
Unspecified 13 8%
Student > Bachelor 13 8%
Student > Ph. D. Student 11 7%
Researcher 10 6%
Other 36 23%
Unknown 55 35%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 27 17%
Sports and Recreations 19 12%
Medicine and Dentistry 16 10%
Unspecified 13 8%
Social Sciences 7 4%
Other 19 12%
Unknown 58 36%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1185. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 November 2023.
All research outputs
#12,097
of 25,480,126 outputs
Outputs from Sports Health
#2
of 1,116 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#75
of 280,455 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Sports Health
#2
of 9 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,480,126 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,116 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 23.8. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 280,455 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 9 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 7 of them.