When Alice Hendy moved to London from her native Portsmouth, West Ham United became a big part of her life.
Alice lived a stone’s throw from Upton Park when the Hammers still played there, and would save money she should have been spending on food and drink, just so she could watch her new local team. A lot of the time, she would take her brother Josh along to games to give him a taste of Premier League football.
In November 2020, Josh died by suicide at the age of 21. Alice has responded by setting up R;pple, a browser extension which intercepts searches to do with self-harm and suicide and directs users to immediate and longer-term support. This month, a year after the extension was launched, West Ham themselves have become the first Premier League club to partner with R;pple to support their own staff and players on their books.
“Me and Josh would go to West Ham together all the time,” Alice tells Mirror Football . “I've got photos of him in his shirt. So it's quite poignant, really, that West Ham are the first club to take us on.
“I'm trying desperately to resonate with the footballing world. Firstly because me and Josh are huge football fans, but secondly, 75% of suicides in this country are men and football is still a male-dominated environment.
“Football clubs can use this in a variety of ways, they can download it on all of their academy player laptops, as an example. The pressure that they're under to get into the team, if they've got an injury, if there's a new player that's been signed, if they're going to be let go, if their form isn't very good, all of those things contribute to [players’] mental health and their wellbeing.”
Alice was inspired to set up R;pple when discovering Josh’s own searches had been met with “tips and encouragement” over how to end his life, and is desperate to avoid this happening to others. She works in cyber-security, and considers her work a blessing in helping her come up with the idea while holding the knowledge needed to develop it. And now she’s doing what she can to work with sporting organisations, and particularly male-dominated spaces like football, boxing and other sports, in response to that 75% statistic.
"It has been heart-breaking and extremely moving for everyone at the Club to hear about the tragic story of Josh," Michele Gull, director of human resources at West Ham United explains. "However it has been uplifting and inspiring to learn that Alice, as a tribute to her brother, has set up R;pple as a suicide prevention tool."
Gull reveals a number of staff members at the club have qualified as Mental Health First Aiders, and adds that West Ham have an employee assistance programme. This, in her words, is "a confidential service which is intended to help employees deal with personal problems that might adversely impact their work performance, health and wellbeing".
In West Ham’s case, the club aren’t just using R;pple to support their own players and staff, but also to help the local community. Through its charitable foundation , the club is taking the lead, ensuring the message is spread far and wide.
There have also been conversations with other clubs, in the Premier League and EFL, so West Ham might be the first but R;pple hope they won’t be the last. And across the board, there appears to be a desire to provide help where it’s most needed.
“They [West Ham] have got links to local schools, local colleges, local universities - this is all something that the West Ham Foundation are going to be promoting to those establishments as well, because the more people that have this on their computer, the more people it's going to save,” Alice says. “there's a real sense that they're doing this because it's the right thing to do.”
Clubs are able to install R;pple on the computers of staff and players, as well as on the Wi-Fi network inside their stadiums. Similarly, other workplaces, schools and even parents can add it to relevant devices.
West Ham plan to launch R;pple on all club devices on World Mental Health Day (October 10). "We feel this is a symbolic and appropriate moment for the launch. Our aspiration is to roll this out across all areas, including for our players and our academy," Gull says.
The club see R;pple as something which will complement the measures already in place, and its introduction comes after former West Ham United women captain Gilly Flaherty opened up about her own mental health challenges in 2020. Flaherty was hospitalised after trying to take her own life in 2007, and shared her experience in support of the Heads Up campaign.
"Gilly’s story highlights the importance of speaking out on all matters around mental health, because it is more common than you think and help and resources are there for those in need," Gull adds.
When someone searches for a topic around self-harm or suicide, they are first given a breathing exercise - “designed to make that person stop, pause, reflect and think,” as Alice puts it - and the user is then directed to two tabs marked ‘talk to someone now’ and ‘find continued support’. This can mean services like The Samaritans or CALM, or it can be tailored to specific mental health support lines for individual clubs.
Alice explains that personal data is not tracked. “It's a silent intervention,” she says. “Nobody will be notified if someone searches something, it's simply there to try and interrupt people when they are searching for this stuff and redirect them to more hopeful resources.”
While this means there is no way of determining just how many individuals have directly benefited from R;pple, there have been 850,000 downloads and more than 3,300 searches intercepted since it launched on World Suicide Prevention Day in September 2021. What’s more, 24 people have reached out voluntarily to tell R;pple they’re still around because of the interventions they have received.
“It's too late for me and my family,” Alice says. “But… knowing this is helping people out there who are struggling, and stopping any other parents and other sisters feeling how I feel, it's very rewarding but also very sad that I have to do it.”
If you need confidential support you can call the Samaritans, which can be reached round the clock, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
If you need a response immediately, it’s best to call them on the phone. You can reach them by calling 116 123, by emailing jo@samaritans.org or by visiting www.samaritans.org
For more information on R;pple, visit www.ripplesuicideprevention.com
