More Than a Game: How Soccer Builds Girls’ Mental Health
EVIDENCE TO ACTION | Science Made Simple World Cup Edition | The State of Women Institute
By Dr. Odessa Lacsina, Executive Director, The State of Women Institute
Spain won the 2026 FIFA World Cup earlier this week. A goal in extra time. 70,000 people watched in New Jersey, and millions more watched from living rooms, bars, and phones held up in streets across the world.
Somewhere in all of that, a girl decided she wanted to play.
Research already knows what happens next — and it has nothing to do with whether she ever scores a goal.
What the Research Shows
Research published in Systematic Reviews in March pulled together 189 studies on sport and youth mental health. Team sports showed stronger and more consistent mental health benefits than individual sports across every measure: self-esteem, life satisfaction, lower depression, lower anxiety. The mechanism was not competition or achievement. It was belonging, self-perception, and social support.¹
A separate study from RMIT University, conducted in partnership with VicHealth, tracked girls aged 11 to 17 across a full soccer season. Girls who reported a stronger sense of belonging to their team had lower anxiety, stronger peer relationships, and higher levels of life satisfaction and purpose. They described their teammates as a second family. Not a team. A family.²
Why Girls Leave — and Why it Matters
This matters because girls leave sport.
Girls drop out of organized athletics at roughly twice the rate of boys during adolescence — right at the window where the mental health benefits are most protective. The reasons are layered: body image pressure, fewer visible role models, less investment in girls' programs, and coaching cultures that were not built with them in mind.
But the RMIT study pointed to something specific. Belonging was the protective factor. When girls felt they had a place on a team, the benefits held. When that sense eroded, so did the outcomes.²
Representation and Access
Girls watching this tournament are growing up in an era when women's soccer has a visibility it simply didn't have a generation ago. Research shows that girls who see themselves reflected in elite sport are more likely to participate — and participation is doing something measurable in how they feel about themselves and their lives.
But access to organized team sport is not evenly distributed. Girls in under-resourced communities are less likely to have structured programs, safe fields, affordable registration, or coaches trained in adolescent wellbeing. The mental health benefits the research describes do not reach them automatically.
Today was a good day for soccer. The science suggests it could also be a good day to ask which girls in your community have a team to belong to — and which ones don't.
Sources
¹ Khan et al. "Sport and youth mental health: a systematic review." Systematic Reviews, March 2026. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-026-03104-1
² Coate B et al. RMIT University / VicHealth, April 2026. (Full DOI not available at time of publication — please confirm and update before publishing.)
³ Meyers R et al. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, April 2025. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2025.1527622 (Note: This reference is listed in Dr. Lacsina's source notes but is not attributed to a specific claim in the body text. Please confirm where it should be cited, or whether it was used as background research.)
Dr. Odessa Lacsina is the Executive Director of The State of Women Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working across three health equity pillars: Mental Health & Wellness, Maternal Health Equity, and Preventive Wellness.
To learn more or support women's health leadership, visit thestateofwomen.org or follow @thestateofwomen.