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Football fans offered mental health support at Molineux

Football fans offered mental health support at Molineux
Photo by IMAGO/ NurPhoto

Things may not be going well for Wolves on the pitch this season, but the club are being commended this weekend for an initiative they have put on at Molineux.

For the match against Newcastle United on Sunday afternoon, which ultimately ended all square, the club introduced trained mental health stewards to Molineux, who were available and accessible to all fans for the duration of the match.

The initiative is part of a mental health scheme that the Wolves Foundation have ran since 2019, which is believed to have helped more than 2,000 individuals in the local area who have suffered from mental health problems.

Wolves provide fans with mental health support

To prepare for the weekend's initiative, Wolves carried out suicide prevention training to more than 400 stewards at Molineux while also assigning four of them to be ‘wellbeing' stewards.

In addition to the stewarding, the club also dedicated 14 pages of the matchday programme to individuals who have benefited from the support that has been provided by the foundation over the last seven years.

One man who has benefited from the scheme is John Martin, a 70-year-old Wolves fan who has been attending matches at Molineux since he was just ten years old. Martin is credited as saying:

“If it hadn't been for the foundation, I wouldn't be here today. I'd disappeared a couple of times with the intention of ending things, because things had just got too much for me.”

Other supporters featured in the programme were quoted as saying that the initiatives put on by the club were ‘a relief' and a way to ‘unburden' themselves.

FGG says: Wolves are leading the way

While Wolves are not the only club in the Premier League to profess to care about mental health, they are arguably the one that is doing the most to show that they are serious.

They are one of 11 Premier League Clubs involved in a “Together Against Suicide” campaign, and they have said that they plan to ‘use the power of football to spark conversations, break down stigma and offer life-saving support'.

Andy is a freelance sports writer with ten years of experience covering major sporting events across Europe. He has also been a season ticket holder at Old Trafford since 2008 and has visited over 40 football stadiums in the United Kingdom and abroad following the Reds.

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