We all know it’s good to talk out your problems, to share your issues – particularly those relating to mental health – with someone else. But the actual act of sitting and talking can feel intimidating.
A new initiative between Fuller’s London Pride and its long-standing charity partner Brave Mind – which uses sport to support young people’s mental health – hopes to lower that hurdle by encouraging people to talk not face to face, but rather side by side.
“I’m amazed at how easy it is to talk to someone when you’re shoulder to shoulder rather than looking down the lens of their own personal camera,” said Rams RFC Minis manager Alan Meechan, in one of the videos in the series, Side-by-Side (YouTube).
In each episode – introduced by former England rugby international Joe Marler – various names from the rugby community sit alongside each other in their clubhouses to consider their own mental health and how to help others.
Former coach Jason Betteley shared his struggle with depression and how he was “really battling with it but not knowing what I was experiencing” before finding support in the rugby community. Patrick Tooley, an ex-player at Henley RFC, recounted his difficult adolescence, and how now helping others was “a cathartic thing”.
The seating arrangement makes often tricky chats “clearly non-confrontational”, he added. “You’re listening because you’re not trying to read someone’s expressions.”
The videos are perhaps too short for any truly deep discussion, but will surely prove a prompt for many to have valuable, side-by-side conversations of their own.
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