Published in a peer-reviewed journalOriginal research

Depression and Resilience in Youth Mixed Martial Arts Athletes

A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Jeffrey Fujimoto, Alexandra Y Boyd, Karen Ladnier, Carlos Uquillas. 2026. Cureus.

Read the full textDOI 10.7759/cureus.101625PubMed 41700277

The medical question

Which mental-health needs require better recognition and support for fighters?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about a fighter’s psychological health, access to support and health after competition. The study’s population and assessment methods determine which questions it can inform.

Summary

Youth MMA athletes completed depression and resilience questionnaires. Four of 108 complete respondents screened positive for depression using the study threshold.

What the abstract reports

  • 276 athletes aged 8 to 17 were recruited and 108 completed both questionnaires (39%).
  • 4 of the 108 (3.7%) screened positive for depression at the questionnaire cutoff used.
  • Scores did not differ significantly by age, gender, race, training hours, weight-cutting practices, parental coaching, injury history or years of competition.

Publication status and notices

Published in a peer-reviewed journal. Cross-sectional questionnaire study in Cureus. PubMed publication type: Journal Article.

No correction, retraction or expression of concern was found in PubMed, Crossref or Scite when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record.

Article details

Relationship
External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.
Published online
No online date in the publisher’s Crossref deposit
Issue date
15 January 2026, volume 18, issue 1
Repository date
15 January 2026 (Europe PMC first-publication date)
Date used here
15 January 2026 (Europe PMC first-publication date)
Rights
CC BY. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY), as recorded by Europe PMC. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. No abstract text, figure or table from the article is reproduced here. Rights statement at the source.
Source check
, against PubMed (NCBI), Crossref, Europe PMC and Scite. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.
Appraisal
The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.
Clinical review
None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.
Funding and conflicts
See the source record for the authors’ funding and disclosures.
Catalog
FH-015, added

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

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