Once considered a taboo subject, mental health in women’s football is now a vital and urgent topic of discussion. Today, as awareness grows around the unique pressures facing female footballers, mental health support is increasingly seen as essential, not optional. These athletes endure stressors both on and off the field, making mental health care as important as physical training.
For years, the women’s game has called for serious attention to player and coaching staff mental health. This became painfully apparent in September 2023 with the tragic death of Maddie Cusack, who took her own life, sending shockwaves across the women’s football community and beyond. Her death raised a critical question: are clubs truly supporting their players’ mental well-being?
There are various organisations and initiatives, like The PFA, The FA, Sporting Chance, and The LMA, offering support to players, coaches, and staff, yet, the pressing need remains for direct, personal connections to ensure meaningful mental health support that lasts.
Mark McGuigan, Director and Lead Mental Health Consultant at Willow Grove Consultants, is one such advocate working to close this gap. With extensive experience in mental health and as a registered Occupational Therapist, Mark specialises in mental illness prevention and treatment, especially for those diagnosed with depression. Previously, his offers to partner with clubs were often dismissed, even as he observed how much female footballers could benefit from targeted support, especially those sidelined by injuries.
Mark recalls hearing a player describe her struggles with isolation and loneliness during an ACL rehab, describing her experience as “depressing”—a sentiment he found echoed in his work with clients in mental health facilities. He developed guidelines to support players dealing with long-term injuries, but clubs continued to show little interest.
Undeterred, Mark began reaching out to players directly, especially those who had openly discussed their mental health struggles. What he noticed was striking: many players willing to speak up about their experiences were either retired or nearing the end of their careers. For active players, fear of being dropped, denied contracts, or appearing “weak” made them hesitant to speak openly.
This reluctancy reflects a sad reality in women’s football. When players feel they can’t be honest without risking their careers, the need for change becomes undeniable. To safeguard the mental well-being of players, both clubs and leagues must take a proactive, personal approach to mental health—creating environments where athletes can speak freely, seek support, and ultimately thrive.
In elite women’s football, injuries are inevitable. ACL injuries, in particular, have become alarmingly common, with more players sidelined each week. While physical setbacks are visible, other struggles remain hidden. Mental health challenges, like depression and anxiety, are common but often overlooked, with players themselves sometimes unaware or reluctant to check in on one another.
For the past five years, Mark has worked closely with top women’s clubs and has observed that mental health issues in women’s football are frequently rooted in financial and lifestyle strains. Many players, especially in lower leagues, deal with low or inconsistent pay, minimal job security, and the demands of balancing full-time work with intense training schedules. For these athletes, football often consumes weekends and leaves little time for recovery, adding to their stress and mental load.
Outside the top leagues, job security and access to medical resources are even scarcer. Earlier this year, Kayleigh McDonald’s experience highlighted this challenge when she had to turn to crowdfunding to secure funding for ACL surgery. Though her club, Stoke City FC, eventually covered the procedure, the initial need to crowdfund reflects the wider issue—female players often lack essential support for their physical and mental well-being.
To create a sustainable future for women’s football, mental health needs to be prioritised alongside physical care, and support structures must be established to address the unique pressures these athletes face.
Since England won the Euro’s, Mark has noticed that both elite and grassroot level clubs are putting a stronger emphasis on mental health, asking for a general service that will best support the players and the coaching staff. This is a service; Mark believes he can offer.
However, it’s sad to think that it had to take winning an international tournament for mental-health to be taken seriously? Every day we see the struggles players go through in terms of not getting enough rest between club and international games. However, it is undeniable that things are getting better and I do believe there are trends that we are starting to see where mental-health is becoming much less of a taboo.
Mark mentioned how inspired he was listening to players and staff talking about mental-health and how important it can be when helping to get players back on the training pitch post-injury. Of course, it will take time for mental-health services to be implanted into the infrastructure of women’s football as a whole, but with the work being done by Willow Grove Consultants, and many others, the future does look more promising.
To start, we hope that with the intervention and takeover of the Women’s Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL), that every club and player in the Barclays Women’s Super League and Barclays Women’s Championship will be able to access mental-health services, whenever and wherever they might need to. With the launch of this new vision and mission to transform women’s football, we hope it will also create a space where mental-health services for clubs can flourish and grow.
