Football and men’s mental health
Football and men’s mental health
Football culture’s relationship with the mind
Remember when former professional footballers used to just sod off and buy a pub? Good times.
No up-front guff in this issue, just a flag. Last week, I listened to PJ Vogt’s Search Engine podcast episode about trigger warnings and content warnings, so I’m aware of the limited benefit (at best) and possible negative impact (at worst) of applying them before potentially triggering content.
But look at the title of this week’s main article and make up your own mind.
Football and men’s mental health
When it really comes down to it, being a football supporter is a simple matter of highs and lows. We’re entranced by the highs and terrified of the lows. That much is obvious. What's less commonly acknowledged is that we're addicted to the variance between the two.
For many of us, football takes over to such an extent that its ability to affect our mental health for both better and worse is largely unavoidable. Highs and lows, ups, downs, and everything in between.
There are millions of men in the United Kingdom who don't care for football at all, but enough of us do that the game and the public health matter of men's mental health are interwoven.
Football isn't just a game for men, and following a team is a pleasure and a chore to be enjoyed and endured by everyone. Sex and gender don't define mental health any more than participation in football culture, but the only perspective I can relate to is that of a man living with depression and anxiety.
Men's mental health is considered a specific issue for good reason. In the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of people under the age of 35 and of men under the age of 50. Men aged between 50 and 54 are the highest risk group, while the overall suicide rate for all men is 16.1 per 100,000 compared to 5.3 per 100,000 women in England. The same rate is broadly matched in Wales and Scotland.
Suicide isn’t a uniquely male problem but it is a disproportionately male one. Football has a part to play in addressing that, both because of the unavoidable demographic overlap and as a result of the extent to which people – men – allow it to add colour to their life experience.
In the last few years, Norwich City and Wolverhampton Wanderers have been among the clubs that have created very high-profile communications material directly tackling male suicide, material that simply assumes it as a football problem. It's an inconvenient truth that these clubs took to heart without hesitation.
Mental health, like football, is far from straightforward. Where they intersect, they throw up competing positives and negatives. For all the good outcomes from groups of people sharing space and time in the real world, the outright toxicity of social media, not least the godforsaken cultural wasteland of Football Twitter, is a threat to all our sanity.
It's not all sunshine and light offline either. The links between alcoholism and mental health challenges are as well established as the connection between alcohol and football. Prohibited substances and their effects are also now in evidence at any professional football match. They, too, can have a serious impact on the mental health of users.
Nevertheless, football supporter culture is about shared experiences and communal spaces, both of which a great many men find more difficult to come by, and harder to handle, than you might imagine. Football has a way of unlocking those doors.
Just having a reason to be around friends, to hang out and be together, can make a man's life a little bit easier. Football provides that without the need to ask for it. Asking for it is tough.
Participating in these shared experiences and social spaces has proven psychological benefits. It makes connections and develops a sense of belonging. In turn, camaraderie and validation help to make life feel more worthwhile. The power of knowing we’re not alone, that we’re not just a part of something but a valued part of something, can’t be overestimated.
According to CDC research, “When people are socially connected and have stable and supportive relationships, they are more likely to make healthy choices and to have better mental and physical health outcomes. They are also better able to cope with hard times, stress, anxiety, and depression.”
A lot of men struggle to channel their passions and process their emotions in a healthy way. Football can give us that as well as a distraction from the everyday stresses and boredoms of life. Work can be hard. Family can be hard. Having an outlet for that might be the healthiest method of prevention.
Humans need an outlet and we crave rituals too. Where there are risks to mental health, consistency and predictability and habit can be helpful. As well as the sociological importance of ritual, repetition of familiar behaviours engages the amygdala, which allows the brain to process fear – anxiety, to give it another label – and emotions.
People involved in football instinctively understand the game’s role in tackling men’s mental health problems. There’s a long and growing list of organisations that seek to harness that link.
Heads Together works closely with the Football Association. Head In The Game focuses on active participation in the sport. 12th Man encourages men to talk. There’s Kick Start FC and Mental Health United. There’s The Changing Room in Scotland. The matchday programme I produce carries an ad in every issue for Andy’s Man Club as part of its partnership with the Pitching In Northern Premier League. That’s the tip of the iceberg.
Just like reaping the mental health benefits of being with a group of friends, all of these communities depend on two things. First, they rely on a willingness and a readiness to talk. That’s not always easy, and that’s where the second requirement comes into play.
If you’re concerned about mental health, your job isn’t to make your friends talk. It’s to be emotionally available when they’re ready to need someone to listen.
That’s the sort of space football needs to be, and the sort of space football is better positioned to be than anything else. If it’s kinship by stealth, so be it. If it’s openness served with a side of piss-taking and offensive language, fine.
The crisis in men’s mental health is too acute to mess about waiting for the ideal set of circumstances. What’s needed from every group of football supporters is whatever allows them to make their own little slice of the culture a place where men can benefit from the enormous positive mental health potential of football.
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“Then when we hear that the coach and three of their players corner a 19-year-old player of ours, by himself. That’s when there’s a problem.”
Toronto FC captain Jonathan Osorio on the post-match scrap involving TFC and the ever classy New York Office of City Football Group.
Salty beef extracts
Has Wenger finally won the culture war over big money in football? (The Guardian)
Men in football get full rein to pursue their dreams while women must compromise (The Guardian)
Ange Postecoglou has reinvented Spurs. But the path forward is murky (The Guardian)
How a Welshman helped end Como's 21-year Serie A absence (BBC Sport)
Fences, locks and £5m: How Wembley plans to keep ticketless fans out (i)
‘It was in a mess’: The inside story of Mansfield Town’s rise to League One (i)
Manchester United under Erik Ten O'Farrell remain as intractable as ever (Unexpected Delirium)
Dessert
The new GEL-NYC ‘Indigo’ from Asics is itching to get on my feet.
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