This week, Podium Analytics welcomed experts from mental health and psychological wellbeing to help with our mission to make sport safer, focusing specifically on how we can reduce the psychological impact of sports injuries in young people.

Podium is developing a Mental Health and Psychological Wellbeing strategy as a core part of our mission. On Tuesday 10th May, academic experts, charity leaders, former professional athletes, teachers, and Podium staff met to discuss the actions Podium will take, in collaboration with other key stakeholders, using science and data alongside real-world practical interventions to make sport safer for young people.

Experts included:

• Professor Joan Duda, Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology, University of Birmingham
• Professor Robert Hepach, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
• Sarah Hughes, CEO, Centre for Mental Health and Adviser to FA Mental Health Programme
• Debbie Jevans, Special Adviser for Sport, Podium Analytics
• Neil Moggan, Director of Sports, Health and PSHE, City Academy Norwich
• Sam Parfitt, Founder, The True Athlete Project
• Dr Tim Rogers, Consultant Psychiatrist, and sports and mental health expert
• Professor Andy Smith, Professor of Sport and Physical Activity, Edge Hill University
• Amy Williams MBE, Former British Skeleton Racer and Olympic Gold Medallist

The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is ‘loneliness’. At our workshop this week, we discussed sports injury and its link to feelings of loneliness. We also discussed recovery and how best to combat feelings of loneliness during the challenging days, weeks and sometimes months of injury recovery.  

Here are some of the thoughts that were shared:

“What I have learned from my injuries, is you always come back stronger.”

“If I’m out with injury, I don’t want to be in the ‘left out’ group, so coaches please find ways to keep your injured athletes involved. Recover together.”

“Loneliness can be worrying and isolating, but it can be temporary. You will come back better.”

“Loneliness is something we all experience. It can make us feel lost and excluded from the world. But, there is hope. My antidote is finding my peers, sometimes in real life and sometimes online; being with people who understand makes all the difference.”

“Working with schools, clubs, experts, young people, and athletes with lived experience of mental health challenges and injury, we are making good progress in setting out our vision for a safer world of youth sport. Today takes us further on our journey to make a lasting social and cultural change in the world of sports and sports injury.”

Details of the Podium Strategy on Mental Health and Psychological Wellbeing will be released later this summer.

Mental Health Foundation

Since 1949, the Mental Health Foundation has been the UK’s leading charity for everyone’s mental health.

The vision of the Foundation is for a world with good mental health for all, working to prevent mental health problems, helping people understand, protect, and sustain their mental health. The Foundation drives change towards a mentally healthy society for all, and support communities, families, and individuals to live mentally healthier lives, with a particular focus on those at greatest risk.

The Foundation is the home of Mental Health Awareness Week.

mentalhealth.org.uk

Mental Health Awareness Week 2022

Together we can tackle loneliness

One in four adults feel lonely some or all of the time. There’s no single cause and there’s no one solution. After all, we’re all different! But, the longer we feel lonely, the more we are at risk of mental health problems. Some people are also at higher risk of feeling lonely than others.

For Mental Health Awareness Week this year, the Mental Health Foundation is raising awareness of the impact of loneliness on our mental health and the practical steps we can take to address it.

Find out more here

Follow the hashtags #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek and #IveBeenThere