The SPFL Trust and the Chris Mitchell Foundation have teamed up to help football managers spot the signs of psychiatric distress in a new world-leading mental health first aid course. MARK MCLAUGHLIN reports.
"HE looked at me, and he said, 'I’m done dad, I’m done.’.”
Philip Mitchell chokes back tears as he recalls the last time he saw his son Chris, a promising young footballer who struggled to adapt to life off the park.
"He ran away from me and I phoned 999 because we were aware then that he had been looking at websites for suicide, and he suggested to his sister Laura that he was contemplating it,” says Mr Mitchell.
Chris, who cut his teeth at Falkirk and spent a year at Bradford City, watched his dreams slip away when he was dropped by Queen Of The South due to complications from a spinal injury. He took his own life on May 7 2016.
"At the funeral, all of his family and footballing colleagues were saying, 'How could this happen?’,” says Mr Mitchell.
"We came to the conclusion that there was very little in place to help people with mental health issues in Scottish professional football.
"My daughter Laura was the driving force behind doing something in professional Scottish football.”
The family founded the Chris Mitchell Foundation to raise awareness of mental health problems in football — and his memory has gone on to inspire a movement far beyond the football park.
The SPFL Trust has recently started running a mental health first aid course, thought to be the first of its kind anywhere in the professional sporting world.
Mark Fleming, the SPFL chaplain who runs the course, has already been asked to do bespoke training at Celtic, Rangers and further afield in Liverpool.
He's also giving mental health training to Scottish Rugby and would like to see it expanded to other sports — particularly after the apparent suicide of young British snowboarder Ellie Soutter in July.
Mr Mitchell has urged managers and staff to look beyond the false smiles and focus on actions and choices.
"Chris would say, 'No, I don’t miss football at all', but later on it became apparent that he was missing football,” he says.
“He missed the game on a Saturday, but he also missed the banter with the guys in the dressing room during the week.
"He was on his own now out in the real world. He started making bad life choices, act out of character, and a fortnight before his death he was found unconscious but it wasn’t a suicide attempt.
"He was becoming more introverted so he went to a mental health clinic and he was given a course of antidepressants, but he was ashamed to go and get them because he would be admitting that he might have a mental health problem, so his sister had to get his medication for him.
"He started taking that, but it apparently made him worse so he stopped taking it. I’ve heard since that it can make you worse before it makes you better.
"We were doing up his flat and we had a simple domestic issue to deal with, but he just couldn’t cope with it and he became anxious, hysterical and everything in between."
The SPFL Trust first aid training course aims to educate managers to spot signs of mental anguish, and ensure they don’t push players beyond their physical and mental limits.
Chris began doing personal training at local gyms when he was told he would never play professionally again before accepting a sales job with a family firm, but he struggled to adapt to life without football.
It’s a common dilemma for young players whose single-minded pursuit of footballing triumph often blind them to prospect that it could all end in an instant when they feel a worrying twinge or a sickening crack on the park.
"In hindsight now, reflecting back on Christopher’s life, with all these injuries that he had, they had an adverse effect on him,” says Mr Mitchell.
“You could see that he was more introvert when he was in the convalescent stage of his injuries, but when he was back playing he was his bubbly self again.
"His spinal injury was a long term injury, and what really affected him was when he was doing his rehab in the mornings, and the first team players would turn right to do their training and he would be told to turn left and go for a walk.
"He was isolated and felt unwanted, and he was quite open that he was feeling down about that.
"When he didn’t make a full recovery he was looking at his life long term, and he was looking at his footballing career coming to an end at just 27 years of age. Football was his entire life."
Mr Fleming said: "What Chris’s family have done is take a very positive view of the situation, in the sense that they don’t want this to happen again to anybody else, so they were very keen to equip as many people as possible to be aware of anybody who might be showing signs and symptoms of poor mental health, maybe having thoughts of suicide.
"That was what was behind this course. We don’t want to see another situation like Chris again."
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