Northside man promotes wellness in the GAA

LIFE skills performance mentor Mick O’Toole, who works professionally with organisations and athletes and in his local community in schools and clubs, is also wellbeing advocate with Dublin GAA. 

O’Toole, from Artane, commends awareness initiatives such as ‘Darkness Into Light’, which recently brought tens of thousands of people out to events countrywide, and See Change’s ‘Green Ribbon’ campaign, held every May.

“While Dublin GAA is primarily a sporting and cultural organisation we clearly recognise the importance of wellness and the current struggle with emotional wellbeing amongst our people,” says O’Toole.  

“With this in mind Dublin GAA is currently promoting a range of initiatives within clubs and in partnership with Croke Park.”

An example of the commitment at the highest level is the Dublin GAA ‘I DO’ campaign. Its aim is to promote positive mental health awareness at an individual, family, club, and community level across the communities of Dublin city and county and further afield.

Jim Gavin and Ger Cunningham, Dublin senior football and hurling managers respectively, and a host of high profile senior squad members, both men and women, are readily committed to being involved in promoting the importance of treating physical and emotional wellbeing in their sport.  

“We encourage club members, families and communities to take the same approach,” says O’Toole. 

“In 2016 we have trained 22 Health and Wellbeing Officers (HWO) with further training sessions for the remainder of clubs planned for Autumn 2016.”

According to O’Toole, clubs across the county are promoting, and providing physical and emotional wellbeing activities to promote wellness in a balanced way. 

A small sample of these initiatives include club fun days out, Operation Transformation, life skills’ talks and workshops for club members, support for members currently struggling, de-stressing, talks/tools for exams students, social media campaigns of various types, and most importantly the setting up of wellbeing committees in clubs to develop a structured approach to wellbeing. 

“A good example of this is the Craobh Chiarain approach, a small parish club in Artane/Donnycarney,” says O’Toole, who has featured on a number of local radio programmes recently to promote the wellness agenda.  

“Even with low base financial resources they are implementing a wide ranging wellness plan, ‘cutting it’s cloth to measure’, that has seen the club transform its approach to wellness over the last 18 months. 

“This approach is spreading throughout the Dublin GAA community. These types of initiatives not only improve wellness but save lives, a fact that should not go unnoticed or be taken lightly.” 

REPORT: Brein McGinn