‘Think Football’: Exploring a football for mental health initiative delivered in the community through the lens of personal and social recovery

Publication date: Available online 25 May 2019Source: Mental Health and Physical ActivityAuthor(s): Adam Benkwitz, Laura C. HealyAbstractThe practice and discourse of mental health recovery is evolving, with increasing appreciation given to personal recovery and now social recovery. It therefore follows that we need initiatives that enhance levels of social capital, positive social identities and social inclusion within the community, not just within mental health services. These initiatives must bring people together in ways that allow them to feel that they have ownership of any new social infrastructures and use evidence-based frameworks to evaluate them. One context that has been given some consideration is the use of community sport. This paper therefore contributes to the steadily growing literature in this area by exploring the specifics of a community mental health football project, through the utilisation of the personal and social recovery frameworks that have been established within the ‘mainstream’ mental health evidence base. This relativist study utilised seventeen semi-structured interviews (with participants and staff) and, as a deliberate departure from existing research, chose to adopt a deductive, theoretical approach to the analysis that located the data within the personal recovery and social recovery literature. Both participants and staff were considerably positive about the sessions, and data suggested an adherence to the empirically based CHIME pe...
Source: Mental Health and Physical Activity - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research