As the football season lurches into action this weekend, I am reminded of an old acquaintance of mine who was suffering from severe depression. “My doctor tells me I should take a rest from going to watch the (Bristol) Rovers,” he told me, “because it is making my clinical depression worse.” I knew that he struggled in the mental health department and I took him at his word and true to his doctor’s instructions he took a few years away from his club. I haven’t seen him for a long time now but I hope he has shaken off his demons and is now back to cheering on his heroes. I am reminded of this episode by a cracking story that’s emerged at Forest Green Rovers, whereby GPs can prescribe a free ticket for a day out at the football as an alternative to antidepressants.
This, I read, is an extension of the social prescribing scheme, whereby, it says in The Guardian, “non-medical methods are used to improve people’s mental health and wellbeing.” The local MP Dr Simon Opher says this: “We’ve got some really quite good scientific evidence now that [social prescribing] improves mental health and reduces social isolation,” he says. “If someone comes in with some stress – maybe their partner’s left or they’ve lost a very close relative – you know that they are a bit down in the dumps but they don’t necessarily need medication, and one of the issues in this country is 8.7 million people in England alone are on antidepressant medication and some people could actually get better with other activities. Social prescribing is a way of providing that.”
If there is “really good scientific evidence” to support this idea, as the Doc says there is, I am all for it. If someone’s mental health could be improved simply by going to a football match – and I can definitely understand how it could reduce social isolation, unless you found yourself standing by a complete headbanger, that is. At its best, football has the ability to change lives. The feeling you get when your team wins a big match is like no other. And if you are feeling, as the Doc says, “a bit down in the dumps” and not overwhelmed by severe clinical depression, then if you live in Forest Green – and yes, it really does exist: it’s a suburb of Nailsworth – then why not get onto your local GP and grab your freebie? As I wallow in my usual pool of self-pity, rarely wanting to do anything or see anyone this would be the last thing I’d ask my GP for. But it’s not for folk like me. If it is possible that a free ticket for the footy would be a satisfactory alternative to the antidepressants that prop up some 8.7 million of us this form of social prescribing could be a Godsend.
The irony for me is that football has the exact opposite effect on my mental health. Like my old acquaintance, it made my depression worse. In my case, it’s a long, tiresome story which I will not bother you with today but suffice to say if I never attend a professional football match again in my life, it will be a day too soon. And that, in some ways, is a bit of a shame because some of my best friends devote much of their lives and a decent chunk of their emotions on the Rovers and it was one of the few ways in which I was able to see them on more than a very occasional basis. My guess is that their lives are better by virtue of supporting their team, mine was worse. Never the twain and all that.
Still, well done Dr Opher and Forest Green’s supremo Dale Vince for trying something different. In the world of mental health, which is very much a backwater in Britain, anything is better than nothing and if a few people can benefit from watching Forest Green Rovers Football Club, despite it being a vegan football club, then happy days.
