SPECIAL pt. 1 of 2 - 'When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going'? - An exploration into Mental Health through the prism of Sport

In the first of a two-part special released to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week - Mental Health Awareness Week | Mental Health Foundation - Chris and Nathan explore how attitudes towards understanding Mental Health have evolved within the world of sport over the past 30 years or so.The episode begins by analysing what constituted old-school attitudes towards the concepts of Mental Health in sport.  We explore how mind games and mentality have been part of sport as long as we can remember, embarking on a journey that takes us through Kevin Keegan's famous 'I'd Love It' rant as the pressure of a Premier League title race reached boiling point.  We then discuss John Gregory questioning the validity of Stan Collymore's mental struggles - 'He's earning £20k a week, what has he got to be depressed about?', before assessing Bill Shankly's assertions that players experiencing the riches of top-level football success understanding of 'pressure' paled into insignificance when compared with the daily struggles faced by workers in traditional industries such as mining or those on the breadline struggling to find work.  Our overview of traditional assessments of the role mentality played within sport ends with a discussion of the infamous speech from Jim Telfer as part of the 1997 British and Irish Lions Tour.  Telfer's speeches from this Tour have taken on legendary status, but does his overarching view that "There are two types of Rugby players, boys.  There's honest ones and the rest." represent a gross oversimplification when comes to understanding the mental toughness required to succeed in elite level sport?Our focus then shifts to assess how three modern sporting greats (Michael Phelps, Mark Cavendish and Lindsey Vonn) and their thinking regarding their Mental Health.  We discuss whether their attitudes are representative both of a shift in societal attitudes and understanding of Mental Health, but also raise the questions of if and how sport can be seen as a forerunner in terms of pioneering approaches that could be more widely adopted across society as a whole.In Episode Two, we will take a deeper dive into three particular sports (Boxing, Cricket and Football) and explore how each of these sports are seeking to develop new approaches to ensure participants are 'match fit' and able to manage their own Mental Health.