Mental health support for PSA players as well as players of all levels across the world is a fundamental aspect of the PSA Foundation’s work
We speak with men’s world number one Ali Farag about sport and its impact on mental health, as well as the importance of looking after your mental health and reaching out.
“You can’t you can’t even give it justice for how important mental health support is for any person, really, but especially for athletes and especially individual sports, because it can get very lonely at times.”
“Squash is quite binary. It’s either you win or lose, and when you lose, it doesn’t only hit you as a squash player, it hits the core of your character. “
“You feel like you’re a failure because you go around and you define yourself as a squash player, which is something that we shouldn’t be doing but it’s just because of how much time and effort and mental space we invest in it.”
“You have to surround yourself with a good team, with a good spouse and with good friends and good coaches, and then always seek, I think, professional advice as well because it is going to hit you hard at some point.”
“No matter how good of a player you are, you’re going to have your downs and at these points you need to have the right people around you. I can’t understate how important it is, I guess by surrounding myself with the right people by surrounding myself with my family; having the right perspective.”
“I have other things that define what I am, that give me happiness, like spending time with my wife, with my little kid, with my family, I guess growing as a person, doing different stuff, not just squash I think helps a lot.”
“There is no shame if [mental health] is not going well, which will not happen at all times, in seeking professional advice. “
“When I have a sore muscle or something that’s not going well with my body, I always go straight to a physio with no shame at all. “
“The same way, when I don’t feel well psychologically or mentally, it’s always good to go straight to a psychologist or even a psychiatrist if I need to, and talk to them and seek the right medical advice.”
