LENNON PLEDGE AS HE HELPS LAUNCH CLUB’S SCHOOLS WELLBEING PROJECT
SOMETIMES players do not have a connection with the cause they are supporting.
But for Aaron Lennon, mental wellbeing could hardly be more personal.
Just like the students Burnley in the Community’s Schools’ Mental Wellbeing Project is aimed at, Lennon has experienced depression and anxiety.
He was sectioned under the Mental Health Act in April 2017, when police found him in a distressed state by the side of the M602 in Salford. Looking back, Lennon can see how the pressures built up inside him over four or five years because he was frustrated at not playing regularly at Tottenham and then Everton.
Like many men, he bottled up his anxiety, until it popped that spring day on a motorway hard shoulder.
“I’m one of those people who didn’t want to speak and seek help,” said the Burnley winger. “I found it difficult to ask for it. That’s why it got to where it did.
“I didn’t realise probably until it was way too late. Family members would ask me if I was OK and I’d say, ‘Yeah, I’m OK’, but I wasn’t. Eventually, I did start looking for help and speaking to people. That started with one of the first therapists I met. I knew from the moment I first met him that he was helping.
“He literally helped me within 10 minutes, just having a conversation with him. That was massive for me because I’m not a big speaker.”
Lennon, 31, feels “100 per cent recovered” and is relishing returning from a knee injury, which has sidelined him for the last three months, before the end of the season.
He hopes he can be a role model for others and revealed some players have contacted him for advice. He feels a responsibility to help others and was glad to become a mental wellbeing ambassador for Burnley in the Community.
“I hope I can be a role model,” said the former England star, speaking at Padiham’s Shuttleworth College, one of the seven schools being helped by the Mental Wellbeing Project.
“I’ve spoken to a couple of players – I won’t name them. They wanted to know what I’ve been through and I gave them some advice.
“I hope the kids get the message it’s all right to feel a bit low sometimes and to know there are people in the schools they can work with.
“I had a lot of help, a lot of good people around me – family and friends and a lot of good people in the hospitals and the therapists.
“I definitely think it’s something you can recover from. There is help out there – that’s the message.”