Maintaining A Healthy Mental State

In the week of Mental Health Awareness Day, it’s certainly a concept on the minds of many at present.

Mental Health

Our emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing are all parts of our mental health. It influences our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Additionally, it influences how we respond to stress, interact with others, and make good decisions. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence all the way through to adulthood. These days, unstable mental health is fairly prevalent.

Both physical and mental health are crucial aspects of overall health. For instance, depression raises the danger of many different physical health issues, especially chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. In a similar way, having chronic illnesses can raise the chances of mental disease.

Mental Health In Refereeing

Referees frequently neglect their mental health in an effort to maintain their physical health and performance at their highest levels, leaving them susceptible to mental diseases like depression and anxiety. Most often, officials worry about matchday and making the correct decisions, which might make them more anxious.

Many referees, from grassroots to professional level, suffer from mental health issues in one way or another. Although depression is the most prevalent mental health condition among professional officials, many of them also frequently experience stress, anxiety, a variety of eating disorders, and signs of burnout.

Due to their problems, they find it challenging to attend regular training sessions, which makes them more likely to neglect their physical health. In this situation, referees should focus on mental health, which is just as important as keeping up their optimal physical health.

Finding an official who may be struggling with mental health issues is the hardest hurdle. The pressure to serve as a role model for younger colleagues, following, and even peers is frequently placed on referees of all levels. As a result, they are reluctant to seek assistance or professional support or to open up to someone about the problems that trouble them.

The first step in helping someone with a mental health illness is to be there for them. Even just listening without making judgements can be quite beneficial.

The most crucial steps towards recovery involve enabling officials to control their stress levels with simple but efficient stress management techniques and helping them in creating healthy coping mechanisms moving forward. In the long run, making a consistent effort to put their mental health above everything else can have the biggest impact.

Mental Health and Refereeing Performances

We are all aware of the connection between mental wellness and optimum performance. Any changes in behaviour, attitudes, or feelings that adversely affect a person’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are referred to as a mental illness. Referees experience a special set of pressures that are associated with mental illness, despite the fact that exercise and officiating have numerous good effects on mental health, including boosting self-esteem, social support, and connectivity. There are several instances, including increased pressure, longer seasons, refere coach pressure to win, injuries, identity defined by performance, and body weight.

Depending on the individual and the unique mental health challenge, different mental health issues have different effects on an official’s performance. But it is well known that issues with mental health have a significant impact on performance. Refereeing performances are impacted by stress, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, trauma.

Stress

Officiating performances can be impacted by stress in a variety of ways. Lack of sleep can make it more difficult to deal with stress both within and outside of refereeing. The stress put on by the pressures of a matchday can affect the quality and quantity of sleep. Stress can impair concentration and heighten muscle tension, making officials more susceptible to injury and injury is a big stressor in and of itself. Referees who have been injured may face loneliness, worry, sadness, and fear of sustaining another injury or losing their status with the appointments officer while undergoing recovery.

Anxiety

A typical response to the pressures of a matchday, performance anxiety is common in officiating. Additionally, in some cases, it can help referees in concentrating their energy and concentration on the fixture ahead. At a point worry stops helping and actually starts to hurt officiating performances. It can have an impact on a referee’s focus and sense of self-worth, leading them to act erratically, which can exacerbate their anxiety and self-doubt. If untreated, anxiety associated with officiating can continue to have a negative effect on a referee’s ability to perform well in both training and on matchday.

Depression

An official’s ability to perform can be impacted by depression in a number of ways. A sign of depression is a loss of interest in activities, and depressed referees struggle to perform effectively on the field of play. Sleep patterns that are disturbed can also be a sign of depression. For officials to function at their best, they must get enough sleep. Aches, pains, and cramps are some of the physical side symptoms of depression that can make training and matchdays challenging. Because it can progress to suicidal thoughts and attempts if depression is not addressed, it is a particularly serious mental health disorder.

Stress Management

For officials to be able to sustain their performance levels on the field of play, it is crucial that they should learn good coping mechanisms for stress. One of the main objectives of stress management is to enable referees to control officiating-related stress effectively to enhance psychological wellbeing and optimal performance levels.

There are various methods and strategies that can help with stress management. Even so, the objective of any successful stress management strategy is to identify techniques that one will regularly apply and which reduce potential levels of stress. In order to identify when they need to take a break and make a change in order to prevent becoming chronically stressed, it is crucial for officials and their coaches to understand what stress looks like. This information is crucial because it can direct people towards stress-reduction strategies that are tailored to their requirements.

Any referee can benefit from some useful coping mechanisms when it comes to stress.

• Get breaks

• Planning a realistic schedule

• Give some time to yourself.

• Practice some breathing exercises

• Gratitude journaling

• Work on your hobbies

Motivation

All officiating effort and successes are built on a foundation of motivation. All other mental aspects, such as confidence, intensity, attention, and emotions, are meaningless if you don’t have the motivation and commitment to enhance your refereeing performances. You must have the desire to put in the necessary effort to realise your potential and achieve your goals if you want to be the best match official. Motivation is crucial since it requires you to continue through fatigue, boredom, discomfort, and the need to do other things. Everything that affects your refereeing performances will be impacted by motivation.

There are four signs of less motivation in officials:

• Less interest in fixture appointments

• Less efforts in training sessions

• Inconsistent goals

• Not showing up regularly for the training sessions.

Having the highest level of motivation involves giving everything you have got, all of your time, attention, focus, and energy. It involves putting every effort to improve your refereeing ability. When you experience lack of motivation, concentrate on your long-term goals. Remind yourself of the purpose of your efforts. Tell yourself that the only way you will be able to achieve your goals is to keep working hard. Visualise exactly what you want to accomplish.

At The Third Team I work individually and in collaboration with different professionals where I have developed workshops and 1-2-1 sessions associated with Resilience and Mental Toughness Development to help referees. The workshops and 1-2-1 sessions are interactive, where referees are encouraged to open up and share their experiences to help themselves and each other.

Feel free to contact me if you’d like to know more about my workshops or 1-2-1 sessions and how I could help you or your officials.

Best Wishes,