Association of Latent Mental Health Profiles of Military Officers With Active Sport Participation and Hedonic and Eudaimonic Motives for Sport Participation

Participation in physical activity and sport is an essential tool to improve human wellbeing. Military officers’ mental health issues have been significantly increasing, and suicide prevention is a top priority for Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). The present study investigated how the profiles based on military officers’ mental health are associated with their active sport participation leve and hedonic and eudaimonic motives for sport participation. Participants of the study were 1,168 CAF officers. By applying latent profile analysis to mental health-related variables, we found two clusters, which were named: (a) unfulfilled life (less adaptive mental health) and (b) fulfilled life (adaptive mental health). The results of binary logistic regression demonstrated that active sport participation level and eudaimonic motives, but not hedonic motives, were significantly associated with the military officers’ mental health profiles. The present results suggest that the amount of sport participation and euadimonic motives for sport participation might be the essential factors for the adaptive mental health of military officers. Based on the odds ratio, eudaimonic motives were a more significant factor associated with the mental health profile. The present findings can provide insight into the importance of eudaimonic motives for sport participation on positive mental health.