crying game, The

Mental Health Nursing,  Mar 2006  by Donaghy, Gerard

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A recent Speak Up! talked about the possibility that supporting a football team could be detrimental to your mental health, and with football's World Cup just around the corner, the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) has launched an online questionnaire to gauge just how much football means to men.

The MHF hope the survey will help them find out whether men prefer to watch or to play football; whether they would risk losing their job for the sake of watching an England match; and how victory and defeat affects their mentality and emotions.

Doctor Andrew McCulloch, MHF chief executive, said: 'We know that men suffer from mental health problems but are less likely to talk about their thoughts and feelings than women. We know that playing football and other sports are good for a person's mental health and wellbeing, but we want to know if watching football enables men to express their emotions without any embarrassment.'

Certainly partaking in sport, irrespective of whether or not it is preferable to watching it, has been shown to benefit people with mental health problems, and a recent initiative involving NIMHE, the Football Association, the Berks and Bucks FA and Reading FC has capitalised on this.

The organisations recently hosted a football festival for adults suffering from mental distress, which is set to be the catalyst for establishing a monthly league fixture programme, with the central festival being held annually.

However watching football is -excuse the pun - a whole different ball game. When things are going well, or indeed when events take a turn for the worse, the act of coming together and generating a sense of belonging can in fact override the pessimism of defeat (Pringle, 2002).

But the camaraderie of the terraces does not always make for a fun day out, especially when the game goes against you - just ask Fernando Ricksen. The Glasgow Rangers defender was set upon by an Aberdeen fan during a game at Pittodrie in 2003 after Aberdeen found themselves 2-1 behind having led 1-0 (although being a Glasgow Celtic fan, I can sympathise with anyone who wants to attack Rangers' Fernando Ricksen). The aforementioned offender was subsequently detained under the Mental Health Scotland Act.

More recently a similar outburst of frustration was witnessed at Middlesbrough when a fan was allowed to run across the pitch before hurling his season ticket at the club's manager during a 4-0 home defeat, the fifth of the season. Said fan was no doubt even more depressed while listening on the radio as his side romped home 3-0 against champions Chelsea the following week.

So certainly football fans show no embarrassment when venting emotions such as anger and frustration, but what about displaying feelings of joy and sadness? Professor Bernard Capp of the University of Warwick said in the wake of England's failure at the 2004 European Championships, that it is now virtually acceptable for male fans to cry after a defeat. This is largely due to male footballing icons crying on field, such as Paul Gascoigne's infamous blubbering in front of the television cameras during the 1990 World Cup, which advocates such public displays of emotion among men. Today, typical images of masculinity remain associated with the control of public emotion that might be perceived as weakness,' said Professor Capp. 'Male figures who break that convention may not be criticised, but their behaviour is presented as exceptional and newsworthy. Modern men are still generally ashamed to cry in public, except in exceptional circumstances. Several commentators have speculated whether football is the new religion, and the parallels here are suggestive too: macho football fans can cry without shame after a major victory or defeat, just as Cromwell's macho 'Ironsides' could cry at a prayer meeting' (Higher Education and Research Opportunities in the United Kingdom (HERO) website, 2004).

As to whether or not fans are willing to risk losing their job to catch a football match, it's worth bearing in mind that one in 10 workers planned to pull a 'sickie1 during the last World Cup in 2002. The figure was based on research carried out by Londonbased human resources firm, E-peopleserve, who also worryingly found that 50 per cent of respondents (40 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men) said that they would probably have an alcoholic drink during World Cup matches, which could potentially lead to unruly behaviour at work. Meanwhile half of all men feared they were likely to be distracted by the World Cup at work, and over half of all respondents confessed they would find it stressful at work if England advanced to the final stages of the World Cup (Microscope website, 2002).

The MHF also want to know whether the World Cup will strengthen or weaken relationships between couples. Well, it could conceivably be more stressful on couples if there wasn't a World Cup. An internet survey for Barclaycard found that when there is no major tournament during the summer, football fans suffer from 'end of season affective disorder'. According to the report, the specific symptoms associated with the disorder are lethargy, lack of direction, unsociability, a feeling of emptiness, lack of focus, and mood swings.