Exploring Mental Health and Illness in the UK Sports Coaching Workforce.

There is growing international concern about the mental health of those who work in sport, including coaches. However, we currently know little about the prevalence of mental illness and the experience of mental health among coaches, and their perceptions and use of workplace mental health support services. Little is also known about coaches' disclosure of mental illness to, and seeking help from, work colleagues. We explore these issues using data from 202 coaches who responded to the first United Kingdom survey of mental health in the sport and physical activity workforce. In total, 55% of coaches reported having ever experienced a mental illness, and 44% currently did, with coaches in grassroots/community settings being most likely to experience mental illness. Depression and anxiety were the most commonly reported conditions and many coaches preferred to access mental health support outside of the organisation for whom they worked or volunteered, with decisions to seek help from others in the workplace being shaped by complex organisational and personal considerations. The findings suggest there is an important public health challenge which needs to be met among coaches, so that we can better address a question of fundamental importance: 'who is looking after the people looking after the people'?

Coleridge's choleras: cholera morbus, Asiatic cholera, and dysentery in early nineteenth-century England.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge suffered from a variety of bowel disorders throughout his life; though a large part of his ailment was caused by his famous opium habit, he continuously sought an organic origin, and on at least two separate occasions, in 1804 and 1831-32, he ascribed his disorders to attacks of "cholera." With Asiatic cholera apparently first reaching England in late 1831, there was considerable argument among both physicians and the general public as to whether it was a distinctly new disease, or merely a severer variation of traditional English cholera, known as "cholera morbus." Coleridge took a particular interest in these discussions. In this paper, we attempt to establish the exact nature of his attacks of illness, and point to the complexities of describing and framing new diseases and bowel disorders in the early nineteenth century.