Men’s Health Week 2021

This week is Men’s Health Week and it presents an opportunity for us to celebrate all those courageous professional sportsmen who have reached out to Sporting Chance for support - and to encourage others to do the same.

Sporting Chance provides treatment, education and consultancy services to sport and sportspeople in relation to mental health and emotional wellbeing. We are the mental health people for professional sportspeople and we supported over a thousand men with various mental health concerns in 2020 alone.

Our treatment work ranges from our exclusive residential clinic for sportspeople suffering with addictive disorders (including alcohol, other drugs and gambling) to our global counselling network for sportspeople with any mental health concern (including low mood, depression and anxiety).

The majority of our client base utilising treatment services are men. We are encouraged by the number of men picking up the phone to have that confidential conversation about how they feel. However, that number could be higher and we cannot stress enough the importance of treating a mental health concern as early as possible in the same way it is immeasurably advantageous (and sometimes critical) when it comes to treating a physical health condition.

Preventative measures are also important and we are proud to provide mental health education and consultancy to several sports across 20 stakeholder partnerships.

In 2019, 75% of all suicides in the UK were men. Furthermore, research suggests that 1 in 8 men do not feel like they have anyone to talk to about their mental health and emotional wellbeing. Other research shows that 1 in 8 men have a common mental health problem.

In our experience, it is also true that sportspeople are even more likely to experience mental health problems during and after their career.

Sporting Chance will continue to provide a safe, confidential and compassionate space for professional sportspeople to talk about their mental health with qualified professional therapists.

If you are a professional sportsperson and want to talk about how you feel then please visit our contact page for details of how to get in touch.

For those reading this who are not eligible for our services, please consider contacting the NHS or an alternative mental health charity for support.

Colin Bland,

Sporting Chance CEO