Beyond Blue Round Preview
Bentleigh Football Netball Club will be proudly partnering with and participating in the official SFNL Beyond Blue Foundation round held 10th-11th May to raise much needed awareness and funding surrounding both men’s and women’s mental health, particularly the staggering rates of suicide and anxiety within our community, a lot which goes on in the darkness.
“On average, 1 in 8 men will have depression and 1 in 5 men will experience anxiety at some stage of their lives. In australia, it's estimated that 45 per cent of people will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime. In any one year, around 1 million Australian adults have depression, and over 2 million have anxiety”. ‘Beyond Blue Foundation’.
Bentleigh Football Netball Club have been proud supporters of the SFNL Beyond Blue round in the hopes to spread the encouraging message within our teams that mental health is the foundation to a healthy and happy lifestyle and most importantly, how to identify not only within your self but within your team mates, the signs and symptoms that things might not be ok. This can be particularly challenging to identify as historically, men’s AFL has been a born and bred sphere of hard contest, both physically and mentally. Unfortunately mental health within men’s AFL has been silenced for many years, until such incredibly important foundations such as Beyond Blue were created to tackle this very stigma and break down those walls of silence and shame with speaking about mental health.
With these statistics only growing, we must keep spreading the support and opportunity for men and women to address and acknowledge their mental health and know they have the access to the help and resources they need, without any stigma of weakness.
Our men’s senior team will be heading into round 5 hot off a nail biting win against new opponents Highett, heading away to Dingley at 2:15. Our reserve men’s will also be chasing a win and join them at Dingley at 12:00pm. Our under 19’s will be the first to kick off Beyond Blue round and face the clash against Dingley at 9:45am.
Our senior women’s division 1 football team will take on Endeavor Hills, last year's grand final premiership runner ups, chasing down their second win all fired up after a thrilling win over East Brighton in round 1.
All of our netball girls will also be proudly participating in Beyond Blue round flying the flag for our club this Saturday at SDNA Netball complex, the firsts at 12pm, followed by the seconds at 1:25 and the thirds at 2:50pm.
Come down to the any of our clubs games across the weekend and help us help raise funds to continue to spread the word about keeping healthy, physically and mentally, on and off the playing field and looking out for your mates mental health which may go unnoticed.
If you are having thoughts of suicide or anxiety, you can contact the following.
Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
life line 24/7: 13 11 14.
If you would like further information you can go
online to https://www.beyondblue.org.au/home.
