Mental health is a hot topic in cricket with many high profiled players making their issues public. As a society we have to talk much more about what’s going on. Unless we talk, we will never be able to help.
At Cricket East we are honoured and delighted to be working with groups of people with mental health issues. Through cricket, we have been able to engage with a number of groups, in partnership with health professionals.
Through this engagement, we have seen some tremendous gains by the clients. The secret of our ‘mental health’ sessions is about their content and pace. Through learning, we have developed a fluid and adaptive way of working, based purely on a reactive trigger on the day.
For us, we have worked hard in providing the most appropriate ‘plan on the day’. Part of our plan is to gain the trust and friendship of our service users and in some cases, this can take many weeks.
It’s so important that we continue with this element of our work because we have come so far with these groups that we feel it is our duty to continue.
One of our clients, in one of our residential groups, cited our cricket sessions as a major influence on his recovery road to the point where he was able to return home after nearly two years in residential care – we cannot possibly have a stronger or more emotional reason for working with people with mental health issues than this!