Mental Health and Wellbeing Toolkit
For coaches looking to inspire the next generation of girls to be physically and mentally active and healthy through sports
The need
While the correlation between positive mental health and wellbeing and participating in sport is not new, Women Win saw a gap in the availability of coach and organisation-oriented tools to inform and support work at the intersection of mental health and wellbeing, sport, and gender. This toolkit aims to explore this intersection and provide practical resources and activities to support mental health and wellbeing in girl-centred sports programming.
Who is it for?
This toolkit is aimed at women and non-binary coaches and leaders who are delivering existing sports and life skills programmes and who want to actively incorporate practices that maintain and support their participants’ mental health and wellbeing.
Why now?
Women Win believes that girls and women are fully equipped with all the skills and expertise to change and transform their communities. Through sport, girls and women can embody leadership and exceed the gender limits placed upon them. Mental health has increasingly become a significant topic to address among girls, women and non-binary people. Recent studies have shown that mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are becoming more prevalent, with the former being the leading cause of illness among adolescents globally. Additionally, the development of this toolkit coincided with the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, which has had severe repercussions on communities around the world.
The convergence of these two factors has driven the development of this toolkit, which aims to support young women and non-binary coaches to embed mental health and wellbeing practices in sport programmes.
Limitations
While we have conducted thorough research and collaborated with partners who are experienced in the field of mental health, it is important to note that Women Win is not a mental health expert. This toolkit aims to support coaches to incorporate mental health and wellbeing practices into their programmes and should not be used as a substitute for professional advice, particularly for severe mental health issues and disorders. Women Win encourages coaches to seek the advice of a mental health professional or other qualified service provider with additional questions regarding mental health diagnosis or treatment.
Dive into the Tool
An open-source resource for coaches looking to inspire the next generation of girls to be physically and mentally active and healthy through sports
Special Thanks
The research for this toolkit has primarily relied on the experiences of Women Win’s partners who work with girls and young women in a variety of regions and contexts. In particular, we would like to thank the following partners for their invaluable contributions: Right to Play Pakistan; Queer Sista Platform; Community Psychosocial Support Organisation (CPSO); Right to Play Canada; Skate Like A Girl.