Abstract
This paper aimed to assess the mental health status of middle and high school student athletes, using longitudinal data from the National Institution For Youth Education (2024) with 898 par-ticipants (Mage = 15.3 years, SDage = 1.6 years; 737 boys, 151 girls, and 10 other/unknown). Results revealed that over 20% of the participants experienced mental health problems at each meas-urement point. Latent profile analysis identified five distinct mental health change patterns: (1) a significant decrease followed by a gradual increase (Profile 1), (2) a gradual decrease over time (Profile 2), (3) a substantial increase followed by a gradual increase (Profile 3), (4) a notable de-crease followed by a significant increase (Profile 4), and (5) a generally stable over time (Profile 5). Furthermore, findings suggested that individuals participating in individual sports tended to align with Profile 1 or 2 compared to Profile 5, while non-male athletes leaned toward Profile 4 over Profile 5.
