Molly Bartrip has not spoken to a psychologist or counsellor in three months. It is the first time in 10 years she has gone that long without it.
The Tottenham Hotspur Women defender (and captain while Beth England recovers from a hip operation) was diagnosed with anorexia at 14, the same age at which she had first been called up by England to join their under-15s squad.
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It was only when she was hospitalised, her liver function failing and facing the prospect of being tube-fed, that she realised the need to start fighting.
By her late teens, she had recovered but, when she was 21, her mental health started to dip again. She was a professional footballer by now, playing for Reading, but struggling to get out of bed. She felt drained. Sad.
Why? She didn’t know.
Later diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety, Bartrip spiralled. She was self-harming. She could not see the point of living. At one point, she decided to end it all by driving into the central reservation of the M25. Something stopped her. A voice in her head was telling her not to do it. To just get home.
“It took a long time to get back to accepting that I actually wanted to be alive,” Bartrip says. “It was about my self-worth. My mentality at the time was, ‘Would I affect anybody (if I wasn’t here)?’. Looking back, I would have affected a hell of a lot of people. But, until you realise it, you’re stuck in this hole.”
Bartrip moved home to live with her parents and brother, without whose support she says she would not be where she is today. She recalls the “little moments, like sitting with them watching TV” that were such a big part of helping her feel like herself again.
She found a counsellor she connected with through the Professional Footballers Association (PFA).
“She made me see things differently,” Bartrip says. “Took football away from it. I was never going to have football at that period of my life, and there was a big chance that I would never have football again. So it was like, ‘Think of you and your family and what you actually want in life. Forget making 100 appearances in the WSL. What do you want in life?’.”
The 27-year-old was the first athlete to confirm her support for a new mental health movement launched today (November 2) called Create the Space, which is powered by Common Goal. Its aim? To create an environment in football where everyone is able and encouraged to express themselves.
“At the time, I had support. It just wasn’t delivered in the right way,” says Bartrip. “I don’t want that to happen to anybody else.”
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Marvin Sordell feels the same way. Over the last six years, the former Bolton Wanderers and Burnley player, who retired from professional football in 2019 at the age of 28, has done a lot of talking. And a lot of listening. All with the same end goal in mind: to try to prevent others from experiencing the same mental health struggles that he did during his 10-year career as a professional footballer.
Now, he says it is time to shift up a gear.
“Even if football doesn’t think it’s ready for this, it doesn’t necessarily have a choice but to be ready,” Sordell tells The Athletic. “We’re moving from a statement of, ‘Something needs to be done’ or ‘More needs to be done’, to ‘We’re going to do something’.
“This isn’t necessarily just about awareness,” he says of Create the Space. “We’ve been raising awareness for a long time and yet a lot of the issues seem to continuously rear their heads. This is action-based and something that can have an impact throughout the football industry, from top down to bottom up.
“It can be remarkable. It can be something that saves so many people’s lives. And that’s not an exaggeration.”
The plan is to deliver an annual programme to football clubs that will ensure every member has the skills and support to be a trusted adult to their colleagues. That means empowering individuals to know how to facilitate conversations on mental health within elite environments.
It means equipping players and coaches at grassroots level with the skills to support themselves, their peers, and their communities on and off the pitch around mental health and wellbeing.
“It’s about, ‘How do we equip everyone to understand and manage mental health in the best possible way?’,” says Sordell, who has spoken openly about the struggles with depression that, in 2013, led to him attempting to take his own life.
There are, he says, lots of things that could have prevented him from heading down the path he did. The biggest one of those was having people around him who understood what mental health is, the signs to look out for and what to do when those signs came to fruition.
“Looking back, people didn’t necessarily know how to deal with it, what to do, what to say, whether to ignore it, whether to address it, where to send me to. That’s dangerous.
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“People dealt with things in the way that they best saw fit without necessarily having the understanding, the tools or the capabilities to deal with it.
“If someone had a broken leg, you wouldn’t just ignore it because you understand we need to take them to this place, or we need to refer them to a specialist or whatever it may be. As we’re moving from the stage of awareness to action within the world of mental health, that’s what we can do.”
Football in 2023 is better equipped to help players who are struggling with their mental health than it was a decade ago, says Sordell. But much of the focus has been on aftercare; solving problems after the fact, as opposed to trying to prevent them.
How do you do that? “We’re looking at creating a healthier industry, full stop,” Sordell says. “By doing that, we prevent people from getting to that point of depression, of wanting to take their own life. It’s being a lot more proactive as opposed to only thinking about being reactive.”
The Create the Space programme is being designed by a psychotherapist, Stefan Imeson, who is head of clinical services at education charity Football Beyond Borders. His explanation of what a healthier industry looks like is one where individuals feel safe and comfortable sharing vulnerabilities.
“It’s about having courageous conversations in a way that’s contained and safe,” says Imeson, “so that there’s a space to have genuine, open, honest dialogue between people. From that, you create a culture in which it’s safe to be vulnerable, it’s safe to share, it’s safe to talk, and these things are not seen as somehow fluffy or esoteric but actually fairly essential.
“If there aren’t conversations that are honest, open, genuine with your counterparts in environments where you spend so much time with those people, we know that the price to pay can be huge. I often think about the things that have happened in football academies with younger players going through periods of severe depression or in the worst case scenarios, taking their own lives.”
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On March 1, 2022, U.S. Women’s National Team defender Naomi Girma lost Katie Meyer, one of her closest friends and a Stanford University team-mate, to suicide. Meyer was 22.
“The most unapologetic, positive, caring person in the world. The first person to be open and talk about her feelings. The first person you’d turn to when you needed to talk about yours. And the last person you’d think would take her own life,” wrote Girma of Meyer in an article for The Players’ Tribune released on the eve of the Women’s World Cup this summer.
“When someone like Katie, who was so open and outgoing, dies by suicide, it’s shocking,” Girma tells The Athletic. “It doesn’t fit what you would see in a movie or something like that. It opened my eyes to realise, everyone struggles in their own way, and it’s important to be conscious of that and try to be a good friend to everyone.”
Girma, who has been nominated for the NWSL’s MVP and Defender of the Year after a strong season with San Diego Wave, says that losing Meyer made her realise the importance of checking in on herself, “understanding that if I want to be the best soccer player, student, or anything, I need to make sure I’m taking care of myself, too”.
Her connection with Common Goal and Create the Space is part of her hope that something positive can come from such tragedy, and that everything possible is done to try to prevent any repeat of what happened to Meyer.
At the professional level, phrases like “mental toughness” are there to help players compete, says Girma, but they can also make people shy away from speaking out about mental health because they do not want to be questioned as an athlete or as a competitor. “It’s about making sure that you feel like you can be open and knowing it doesn’t mean you’re not competitive or you’re not a winner. It just means you also need to take care of that side of yourself.”
Over the last 12 months or so, Arsenal team-mates and partners Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema have been through periods when they have needed to do exactly that. While Mead emerged from last summer on a high after starring in England’s European Championship-winning campaign, Miedema was struggling.
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The Netherlands’ record goalscorer caught COVID-19 during the tournament, leaving her bedbound for 10 days, and after struggling through the early part of the season with her club, she hit a wall.
“Physically, I didn’t feel right,” says Miedema. “And if you don’t feel right physically, your burden becomes even more on your mental health. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I woke up in the mornings and I thought, ‘Sh*t, I need to go to training again. I don’t want to do it’.”
Before an international break in November, Miedema had a conversation with her national team coach Andries Jonker, explaining how she was feeling and he agreed to give her the time off. Jonker then spoke to Arsenal and the conclusion was reached that she would go away for two weeks.
A two-week break mid-season for one of the team’s star players? It was pretty unusual but for Miedema, it was essential.
“If I would have gone on like that, I don’t know if I would have still wanted to play football.”
Miedema recognises that her name and experience in the game put her in a privileged position when it came to requesting such a break, but she hopes that it can be an example to others, that “you and your mental health is the very first thing to actually being a footballer and being successful. So take care of that first”.
Although Miedema hit the ground running on her return to the squad, a few weeks later she and Mead were facing a far lengthier time out, having ruptured their anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL) within weeks of each other.
For Mead, the time away from the game coincided with the loss of her mum, June, to cancer in January this year.
“Football was my outlet, my happy place,” says Mead. “It was my place to switch off. I had the hardest time of my life when I lost my mum and I wasn’t able to play football. Not that I ever want to forget about her, but to have those moments where it just switched off for a second. That’s where I’ve had to grow and process things a little differently. I can’t just escape through football.”
The couple have leaned on each other for support, as well as the close circle of family and friends around them. They also have access to a sports psychologist through their club, but Miedema believes that in the women’s game in general, change is still needed to allow more players to open up.
“As women, we are quite good at sharing how we feel. We’ve created that environment at Arsenal, and we’ve also got it with the national team. But it’s still not where it should be. You still have that feeling that, if you do come out and say that you don’t feel that well, or do need to speak with someone, it will influence you playing or being with the team, which is a feeling that shouldn’t be there.”
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Imeson talks about relationships and attachment as being key to addressing those fears and feelings. “It’s about acknowledging the complexities of human relationships in any organisation and understanding that unless there is a real focus on people’s wellbeing — and not in a tokenistic way, in a way that is informed by the vast body of learning and literature from the world of psychotherapy — it’s very difficult for the organisation to function as well as it could do.”
He points to the experiences of Dele Alli, who revealed details this year of a traumatic childhood during which he was sexually abused and the struggles he has had in recent years with an addiction to sleeping pills.
“To see his incredible career derailed quite to that extent tells you everything you need to know about what can happen when people turn a blind eye or label these kinds of things as ‘fluff’ or unimportant. The collateral is huge,” Imeson says.
“Essentially it’s about, ‘Do you feel safe? Do you feel that you belong? Do you feel a sense of, “It’s OK for me to be here in all the different manifestations of me, whatever that looks like; me when I’m not performing that well or me when I don’t feel happy or when I need help”?’.”
Arsenal Women have a sports psychologist and Bartrip says that Tottenham are “hopefully in the process of getting one in”, something she would like to see replicated across the league. But there is also a broader need for education and understanding of the challenges. “Watching 18-year-olds coming to the first team now, I just hope that they’ve got the support that they need going into what could be a massive career,” says Bartrip. “We’re looking at thousands of fans at the moment coming into stadiums, but what is it going to be like in 10 years? The pressures could be times 10.”
For Imeson, clubs having a psychologist or psychotherapist in place is only one element of what is required.
“There’s always a place to speak to a professional in a private space, especially for more acute care. But for the majority of the ‘worried well’, which is probably most of us, it’s really important to empower people and equip them with the tools, skills and knowledge to take some control over their own mental health.”
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Day-to-day in any organisational culture, Imeson says that is what will have an impact on the mental wellbeing of everyone there.
“Campaigns that say things like, ‘Mental health’s normal and men should all talk about it’ are fine, but that presents quite a challenge for a lot of people, especially those who are living day to day, complex trauma.”
What is needed, he says, is “some common language and common shared understanding around what a psychologically informed environment actually looks like”.
He continues: “And that isn’t fluff, that’s based on the hard science of what we know about the neurobiology of relationships; how can people function and be as happy as they could possibly be with other people?
“We have quite a lot of information suggesting there is a way to do that. And I very much doubt that is something that football clubs on the whole are doing. And it certainly doesn’t cut the mustard just to have a lone professional there.”
Is football ready for what is essentially a culture change? Is the sport prepared to put as much consideration and focus on players’ mental health as their physical wellbeing?
Enter Sordell: “Even if it doesn’t think it’s ready, it doesn’t necessarily have a choice but to be ready.
“That is because of the way football is going as a business, in terms of the financial aspect. We’re looking at an industry which is worth billions, if not trillions of pounds, globally.
“A lot of that is essentially resting on the football players being talented and being able to perform at their best. Without that, so many people, and so many industries within the world of football collapse. We are banking on the fact that these players are going to perform because that allows everybody else to have a job.”
From a clinical perspective, then, Sordell says the players are the most valuable assets within the football industry. And what is the best way to protect and enhance those assets? By leaving no stone unturned.
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“If a club isn’t also going to ensure that a player’s mind is in the best possible place to perform then from a very clinical business perspective, you’re not best looking after your asset,” says Sordell.
“As an industry, if we have people who are mentally and physically not in a place where they are able to perform, then so many other industries collapse underneath it. So we have a responsibility to protect our assets in the best possible way. And looking after their mind is incredibly important.”
If you would like to talk to someone, please try Samaritans in the UK or US. You can call 116 123 free from any phone
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