Promoting Mental Health Awareness in Sport Clubs
Open accessAbstract
Purpose The World Health Organization estimates that millions of people across the world experience mental health problems, yet traditionally athletes have been poorly supported to manage their mental health. The purpose of this paper is to apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour to determine the effect of a mental health awareness programme on sports coaches’ knowledge and intentions to offer support to athletes who experience mental health problems. Design/methodology/approach Adult coaches (n=244) were recruited to attend the Mood Matters in Sport Programme mental health awareness intervention or act as a control. A 2 (group) × 2 (time) quasi-experimental design was adopted. All participants completed the Mental Health Knowledge Schedule and Reported and Intended Behaviour Scale at the beginning and end of the programme. Two months postprogramme delivery focus groups were conducted. Findings A mixed analysis of variance showed a significant interaction effect wherein there were improvements in mental health knowledge and intentions to offer support compared to the control group. Focus group findings provided further detail on how to support mental health awareness in sport clubs. Practical implications Knowledge and intentions to offer support can be enhanced through a short mental health awareness programme. The already established social networks available in sport clubs can provide a natural environment for delivering mental health awareness programmes. The programme facilitated discussion on mental health issues and highlighted that future programmes should contain more sport-related examples (i.e. case studies, videos, etc.). Originality/value This is the first study to apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour to mental health awareness programmes in a sport setting.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the sport context, the theory of planned behaviour was applied in the MHL intervention for coaches.
“In the sport context, the theory of planned behaviour [57] was applied in the MHL intervention for coaches [58].”
From Mental health literacy intervention on help-seeking in athletes: a systematic review (2020) · cites this paper as [58]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 22 · Cited by 39
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Green, H. McGinnity, Á. Meltzer, H. et al. (2006), Mental Health of Children and Young People in Britain. Palgrave, Hampshire.
- Authors
- Breslin, G., Haughey, T. J., Donnelly, P., Kearney, C., & Prentice, G.
- Affiliations
- University of Ulster (GB)
- Dublin Business School (IE)
- Venue
- Journal of Public Mental Health
- Publisher
- Emerald
- Published
- 2017-06-19
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 55-62
- ISSN
- 1746-5729 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2560275193
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 3.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- pure.ulster.ac.uk
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Public Mental Health (publishedVersion)
- Ulster University Research Portal (Ulster University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Physical Activity and Health
- Keywords
- mental health awareness, sports clubs, sports coaches, athletes, theory of planned behavior, mental health knowledge
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
