AAS causes aggression and psychological distress

AAS contribute not only muscle and strength, but also aggression and psychological distress for bodybuilders.

AAS(anabolic androgenic steroids) are both derivatives of testosterone and testosterone, so AAS are androgens. Androgen stands for male sex hormone, and when you describe someone who is full of male sex hormone, you can imagine aggression as well as muscle and strength.

Research on aggression and psychological distress associated with the use of AAS in bodybuilder could help identify individuals and groups most sensitive to the negative and psychological consequences of AAS use to facilitate the development of targeted interventions.

For AAS users, most of the data is on men, and there is a significant lack of data on female bodybuilder studies.

Participants included 206 Bodybuilders using AAS (58.3% female) with a history of regular AAS use for at least 6 months prior to participating in the data collection. Participants ranged in age from 14 to 56 years (M=26.89,SD=7.12 years).

In the study, Cronbach for physical aggression, verbal aggression, hostility, and anger were 0.73, 0.70, 0.77, and 0.69, respectively. Cronbach coefficient of psychological distress was 0.82.

Female and male AAS users in the study averaged 4.37 hours and 6.19 hours of weight training per week at the gym. The mean duration of AAS use was 1.51 years for men and 1.19 years for women.

AAS causes aggression and psychological distress result

The experimental results show that:

Highly aggressive and moderate psychological distress users was 7.63%; The male accounte for 91.67% and the female accounte for 8.33%.

Moderate aggression and moderate psychological distress was 18.645; Males accounte for 80.42% and females accounte for 19.58%.

Moderate aggression and mild psychological distress was 11.71%; Males accounte for 32.46% and females accounte for 67.54%.

Mild aggression and moderate psychological distress was 11.62%; Males account for 30 percent and females for 70 percent.

Low aggression and mild psychological distress accounted for 39.06% of the users; The male accounte for 10.51% and the female accounte for 89.49%.

These data may influence by AAS use methods (e.g., bulking, cycling, and stacking) and individual constitution. However, the experimental results still showed that a large number of exogenous AAS increased the occurrence of aggression and psychological distress in bodybuilder. When using AAS, bodybuilder should follow the doctor’s advice, control the dosage and cycle length, etc., so as to use AAS more safely.