EitC Project Reveals Football Can Help With Mental Health

Findings from a recent ‘football therapy’ pilot project ran by Everton in the Community has revealed evidence to suggest that the medium of football can be used as a therapeutic tool to support individuals with a mental health condition.

Launched in 2019, the charity’s ‘SPHERE’ project is a European Union Erasmus+ funded project which aims to define and validate a sport and wellbeing approach to improve the psycho-social and bio-physical wellbeing of psychiatric patients, which in turn would be approved by psychiatrists, academic researchers and sport professionals.

Everton in the Community were one of seven organisations who were part of the European consortium coordinated by the European Culture and Sport Organisation (ECOS) in testing a number of different sport-based mental health interventions across multiple pilot sites in Europe.

20 participants took part in EitC’s pilot project, all of whom were clinically referred by Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust with pre-existing conditions ranging from mild to moderate anxiety and depression to more severe and enduring psychotic disorders.

 

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00:36 Mon 18 May 2020

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As part of the 20-week long project, football therapy training sessions took place twice a week for two hours per session at Everton in the Community’s The People’s Hub over a period of four months, combining professional football coaching with psycho-educational football therapy workshops.

The sessions utilised football as a metaphor for life by increasing participants’ self-awareness and emotional literacy to help them develop self-care strategies which would aid their on-going rehabilitation.

The findings reveal that amongst the 20 participants, there was a 20 percent increase in positive mental wellbeing across the group, whilst social functioning improved by a considerable 35%. There was also a 2.3% increase in physical functioning and energy levels were said to have improved by 4%.

Further benefits were also provided to participants with opportunities to take part in other tournaments in addition to further employment and volunteering opportunities. Effective research gathered from Everton in the Community’s interventions will be collated in an evidence-based practice guideline and toolkit for other organisations to use and disseminate amongst its members.

Health and Wellbeing Manager, Johnnie Garside said: “It has been a great honour for EitC to be involved in the Sphere project working alongside so many esteemed organisations from across Europe. We hope the findings from the project can go a long way in helping validate the therapeutic impact of physical activity on mental wellbeing”.