The national mental health charity Mind will recognise the “significant progress” made over the last five years by the sports sector in addressing mental health issues at a conference on March 25.

 The ‘Mental Health in Sport and Physical Activity’ Conference will take place at the Kia Oval in London. To book your place, click here. 

Speakers from various areas of sport will lead conversations about how their organisations have attempted to recognise issues around mental health. They include Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of Mind, former PFA chairman and professional footballer Clarke Carlisle, and Sam Cumming, mental health manager at the English Institute of Sport (EIS).

Laylla Stanley, chair of the conference, told ConnectSport: “We want the people who come to this conference to recognise just how far sport has come.

“There’s been so much achievement and we want others to begin realising how important mental health in sport is.”

Laylla hopes the conference will enable attendees to become better equipped with the skills to support people with mental health issues in sport and improve policies around mental health.

During the morning presentations, the EIS will focus on ‘The Road to Tokyo: UK Sport and EIS journey to better understanding of mental health’, then during the afternoon there will be a number of workshops including ‘Programme delivery’ and ‘Workplace wellbeing’.

Laylla added: “Mind is very happy with how far we’ve come and we want others to realise how important this field is. But we also know there’s more room to grow.”

Mind is a partner of the #21by21 campaign, which aims to encourage 21,000 coaches to become trained in mental health awareness by 2021. To find out more, visit 21by21.info.