NHS football league scores a success!

A football league set up by South West Yorkshire Mental Health Trust is set to expand after proving a huge success. The ‘positive mental attitude’ league was organised for staff and service users across Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield to encourage physical activity and boost wellbeing, and organisers say participants are benefitting from the exercise.

The ‘positive mental attitude’ football league was launched last summer with a tournament involving eight teams playing five-a-side matches and was officially opened by the Mayor of Kirklees, Jean Calvert.

Since its launch, the league has gone from strength to strength with the most recent round of matches, held at Whitcliffe Mount Sports Centre in Cleckheaton, arousing interest from more people eager to take part. With so many people wanting to get involved, organisers are planning to make room for more teams in the next tournament, which is due to take place over the summer.

People who use Trust services have been delighted to take part in a football league and are looking forward to the next round of matches in the summer.

League organiser and South West Yorkshire Mental Health Trust’s diversity and equality manager, Aboobaker Bhana said, "Exercise is good for everyone’s mental wellbeing and the ‘positive mental attitude’ football league has given our service users the opportunity to get active whilst having fun and meeting new people. Those who have taken part have really grown in confidence and it’s great that more and more people are now keen to get involved. To help people recover from mental illness we need to look at their overall health, both physical and mental, and the football league is a step towards this. We hope it will help them along their road to recovery."