An Irish Football Association Foundation event aimed at coaches of girls’ and women’s teams has raised awareness and understanding of mental health issues.
Mind Your Head was organised by the foundation with support from the Northern Ireland Executive Office and Belfast City Council and was staged at the National Football Stadium at Windsor Park.
Attendees at last night’s event completed a workshop delivered by trained facilitators from mental health charity Lighthouse.
Apart from raising awareness and understanding of mental health issues, the course provided useful strategies to deal with issues if they arise within clubs and explored services and support available. And it looked at ways to prevent emotional burnout in coaches.
The event also provided attendees with an opportunity to help form the Irish FA’s mental health strategy, while each club represented at the workshop received a health and wellbeing resource pack.
Jackie Blyth from the Irish FA Foundation, who helped to organise Mind Your Head, revealed: “More than 80 coaches were at the event and we were delighted with the turnout. Mental health is a very important issue and this was reflected in the large attendance.
“The association strives to deliver courses that are beneficial to clubs and players and the feedback we have received so far about last night’s workshop has been very positive.”
See gallery for images from the Mind Your Head event.
