The Attitude of Romanian Sports Fans towards Psychological Counseling

Abstract

Understanding the attitudes of athletes towards sports psychology is crucially important because if psychologists understand the barriers and hesitations of athletes towards psychological counseling, they can intervene educationally to foster a mindset and belief. In the current study, we aim to examine the existing differences between high-performance sports and non-professional (junior) sports regarding psychological counseling. The SPAR (Sport Psychology Attitudes-Revised) questionnaire was applied to a set of 84 athletes, aged between 12 and 36 years old. In junior sports, the scores on the sub-scale of stigma tolerance are lower, and they are less concerned with the stigma issue, preferring to seek psychological counseling only when absolutely necessary.