The traditional football day organised by Athletic Club and Osakidetza brings the Geurea League (Basque Mental Health Intercentre Indoor Football League) to a close
The Athletic Club Foundation, in collaboration with the Osakidetza Mental Health Network of Bizkaia (RSMB), has held the 6th edition of Futbola Buruan in Lezama. This sports and leisure day brings the regular season of the Euskadi Geurea League (Euskadi Intercentre Mental Health Indoor Football League) to a close. As in previous editions, the Athletic Club’s sports facilities were the venue chosen by Foundation to hold this event, with around 550 people (users and professionals) from the Bizkaia Mental Health Network and the Araba Mental Health Network on behalf of Osakidetza, as well as Gizakia, Avifes, Argia, Eragintza, Asasam and the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Arrasate. .
The day began at 10:00 in the morning with successive football matches and multisport activities, and ended at around 14:00 with a lunch for all participants. Group sport is part of the recovery process for people with mental health problems. As well as making a decisive contribution to improving physical fitness, combating metabolic syndrome and acquiring healthy habits, it also helps in the development of people’s life projects in the community environment, combating loneliness and fighting against the social stigma suffered by this group.
It is also used as a therapeutic tool to achieve individual and group objectives. The Foundation’s technicians lead these activities taking into account two key concepts for the RSMB: value-based care and humanisation.
Athletic Club as a driving force for inclusion
Athletic Club’s collaboration with Osakidetza brings an added benefit to the practice of sport, and that is Athletic’s capacity as an engine of inclusion and normalisation with the use of community resources. In this sense, Athletic makes the disease visible, combats misinformation, eliminates social stigma and provides a group identity.
The Foundation’s coaches not only lead football training sessions, but also lead multisport sessions, more aerobic and with cognitive exercises, in 23 centres in the hospital and community environment of the RSMB. Multisport was created by incorporating a gender perspective into physical activity, to include a large number of women with mental health problems (a particularly vulnerable group) who did not have an affinity for football or did not have the appropriate physical conditions for it.
Futbola Buruan is a meeting point, outside the field of care, between people with mental illness and professionals, in which all of them have participated.
