{"id":27746,"date":"2025-09-18T16:00:46","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/?p=27746"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:03:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T15:03:44","slug":"concussion-identity-loss-depression-boxings-toughest-opponent-isnt-in-the-ring-its-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/education-languages-health\/concussion-identity-loss-depression-boxings-toughest-opponent-isnt-in-the-ring-its-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Concussion, identity loss, depression: boxing\u2019s toughest opponent isn\u2019t in the ring \u2013 it\u2019s mental health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ricky Hatton\u2019s death has reignited an all-too-familiar conversation about mental health in sport, <em>says Helen Owton, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology, The Open University.<\/em> Hatton had spoken openly about his long battle with depression, as well as the drug and alcohol addiction that began after his 2007 defeat to Floyd Mayweather.<\/p>\n<p>Research shows that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/18161072\/\">how a boxer thinks<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 their beliefs about success, identity and failure \u2013 can become harmful in the high-stakes context of the sport. The perfectionism and \u201cmust-win\u201d mindset mean even a single loss can feel catastrophic.<\/p>\n<p>The constant pressure of \u201cwinning at all costs\u201d has negative consequences: for some, losing a fight is not just a professional setback but an identity crisis, laced with shame, guilt and a sense of personal failure.<\/p>\n<p>This danger is especially acute for fighters who rise from humble beginnings to fame and glory. For a boxer, the fear of irrelevance or of being forgotten can trigger depression, anxiety and despair. When vulnerability is seen as weakness, many simply\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/326956988_Boxing_Masculinity_and_Identity_The_%27I%27_of_the_Tiger\">bottle up their emotions<\/a>, compounding their internal struggle.<\/p>\n<p>Hatton himself\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/boxing\/52725870\">acknowledged in 2020<\/a>\u00a0that mental-health problems are widespread in boxing. The sport is brutal by design, subjecting fighters to repeated blunt-force trauma to the head and body.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/youth-athletes-not-just-professionals-may-face-mental-health-risks-from-repeated-traumatic-brain-injuries-262207\">Traumatic brain injury (TBI)<\/a>\u00a0is an accepted risk.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/concussion-identity-loss-depression-boxings-toughest-opponent-isnt-in-the-ring-its-mental-health-265317\">Read the full article on The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Picture credit: Pixabay on Pexels<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ricky Hatton\u2019s death has reignited an all-too-familiar conversation about mental health in sport, says Helen Owton, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology, The Open University. Hatton had spoken openly about his long battle with depression, as well as the drug and alcohol addiction that began after his 2007 defeat to Floyd Mayweather. Research shows [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":27748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17],"tags":[862,1643],"class_list":["post-27746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-languages-health","category-sport","tag-faculty-of-wels","tag-ou-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27749,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27746\/revisions\/27749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}