Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine and measure mental toughness during the rehabilitation process with a mental imagery intervention using an electronic digital script. Participants: Based on a power analysis for a 2-tailed within-subjects test design using alpha=0.05, 57 orthopedic non-surgical participants were needed for this study. Setting: This study took place at an NCAA Division 1 and Division III University with male and female athletes who had sustainted a non-surgical orthopedic injury that required a rehabilitation porgram with an athletic trainer. Design: The study design was pre-posttest using the Mental Toughness Questionnaire (MTQ-48) to quantitatively measure mental toughness of the participants before beginning the non-surgical injury rehabilitation program and at the completion of the rehabilitation program while using an electronic mental imagery intervention. Intervention: An electronic digital mental imagery script was used as the intervention. Participants used during the application of cryotherapy at the end of each their rehabilitation sessions. Main Outcome Measures: The IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0 Armonk, NY : IBM Corp. was used to calculate the Wilcoxon Signed Rank for the mental toughness and the various subscales of the MTQ-48 data analysis. A one way ANOVA was used to analyze mental toughness between genders. Results: There were no significant differences in mental toughness changes with a mental imagery intervention over a minimum of 6 day rehabilitation program. There were no significant differences in the effects of mental toughness on the level of non-surgical injury rehabilitation adherence in collegiate aged student-athletes. There were no significant differences in mental toughness between genders of collegiate aged student-athletes when participating in a non-surgical injury rehabilitation. There were no sigificant differences in rehabilitation adherence between genders: Conclusion: The results of this study suggest athletic trainers, physical therapists, and physicians must continue to work to develop longer mental toughness intervention treatment programs to help athletes’ improve their levels of mental toughness and sustain the improvements over time while maintaining success throughout a rehabilitation program.
