My charity: Sporting Minds UK

Sportingmindsuk is a newly registered charity (1186605) that seeks to raise awareness and provide support for positive mental health in young sportspeople... the first of its kind.

Being the founder of the organisation, I thought I’d run through my inspiration for creating Sportingmindsuk, how proud I am in our achievements during the first few months, and how I appreciate the amazing support we’re already receiving.

After suffering from mental health issues whilst involved in a representative sport environment in 2018, I decided that a strong mental health support mechanism and community was missing from youth representative sport. There was an improving understanding of mental health in general, but there was a lack of education and awareness in relation to representative sport, particularly for young people.

The environment can be a tough one, filled with pressure and uncertainty. It’s difficult enough to bear its weight without a mental health issue such as anxiety or depression. Both sport-related issues and non-sport related issues can easily creep into a young athlete's life, damaging their overall wellbeing and potentially a future career. So that was the inspiration behind Sportingmindsuk, to raise awareness and provide support for positive mental health in young sportspeople.

Since the creation of Sportingmindsuk, I’ve been truly blown away by the support that we’ve received. We’ve achieved charitable status, have over 16k followers on Instagram, and have already been able to raise an incredible amount of awareness through our social media posts. I receive messages of enthusiastic questions and suggestions every day, with lots of you saying how great you think the organisation is, as well as photos of you guys wearing our merchandise, which fills me with pride.

As well as our social media presence and merchandise, we have also gained the support of several high profile young sportspeople who have become our first ambassadors. I couldn’t have hoped for better role models to champion our cause, and to show young sportspeople the importance of not suffering in silence.

Moving forward, we want to continue to increase this sense of community we have gained and create a hub for mental health support and awareness for young sportspeople. We already have five experts in the field of mental health in sport on board with us as well as companies such as Be Empowered and BUPA ready to offer training and support.

In the meantime, our priority is raising as much awareness as possible and getting the message of Sportingmindsuk out there across the nation…

Check us out on Instagram/Facebook — @sportingmindsuk and twitter — @sportingminds_

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