State of Mind were honoured to be invited to the launch of the Mental Health Charter across all sports on Wednesday this week at The Oval Cricket Ground
The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Clarke Carlisle, Paul Farmer (MIND), Sue Baker (Time to Change) with the Executive Chair of the Professional Players Federations Brendan Batson (that includes the Professional Footballers Association, League 13 Super League Players Association, Professional Cricketers Association and Rugby Payers Association and many other sports).
The day began bright and early when State of Mind’s Dr. Phil Cooper delivered three short mental fitness sessions to 50 schoolchildren before they went on to play cricket in the nets and perform Karate moves
The Mental Health Charter includes the following 10 messages and points on the Mental Health Charter
1) Everyone has mental health – good or bad.
2) Physical activity is a powerful way to prevent as well as treat mental ill-health.
3) The sport and recreation sector has come together to promote this message and to get more people to understand that physical activity has the power to change lives.
4) The Charter is by sport for sport. It’s developed by PPF and the Alliance, with the support of Mind and Time to Change.
5) The Charter is designed to help tackle stigma, encourage conversations about mental health and promote physical activity as a way of preventing and dealing with mental health problems.
6) Top athletes are as likely as anybody else to have mental health problems – being good at a sport doesn’t make you immune from poor mental health. In fact their job puts them in very difficult situations which can be highly stressful. We want the Charter to encourage elite athletes to spot the signs of poor mental health – in themselves and others – and to be able to have frank and honest conversations about mental health, to each other, to their employers and to the wider public.
7) All of the major sports and players associations have signed up and are committing themselves to address mental health within own activity.
8) There are lots of good programmes already going on e.g. Sporting Chance, State of Mind, confidential helplines e.g. LPP
9) Signatories will develop benchmarks and programmes with experts from Mind and Time to Change
10) They will work to monitor progress and we will revisit that on World Mental Health Day on 10 October with a national conference.
State of Mind would like to pledge our support to this fantastic charter that has the potential to change and save lives!