Behind the mask: demedicalising race and mental health in professional football

Abstract

The deaths of Gary Speed and Dalian Atkinson, both professional footballers, have raised concerns about mental health in professional football, a sport with which I have been involved all my life, first as a professional player (for Charlton Athletic and England Youth) and later as a counsellor and researcher in my role as Director of Welfare at the Professional Footballers Association of England and Wales (PFA). Football continues to treat mental health as an area of both stigma and taboo, and, despite the growing emergence of women in the game, male domination of the sport is reflected in the prevalence of masculine codes of deflection.