The 'Faraday' perspective: Understanding mental health struggles as a woman footballer 

Dorcas Fumey Kafui vividly recalls the happy days.

“I remember the happiest moment in my life was between kindergarten and class four,” the Ghanaian footballer told Olympics.com.

“I used to play football with the boys on the streets of Sunyani where I grew up.”

Life was great, the future bright.

Football meant everything to her, even though she was occasionally punished by her parents for playing it as a girl.

And Faraday, as she is affectionately known due to her fixation with science, was very good at it.

But what happens when playing the sport you love becomes the activity you hate the most?

What happens when you wake up one day and want to quit football?

Faraday, who is also a spoken word performer, chose to talk openly about her mental health struggles and how it has affected her professional football career in an attempt to change the narrative around it.

Faraday and the first signs of struggle

Being a Ghanaian woman footballer demands great reserves of mental fortitude.

From early childhood, girls who play football are often called names including “obaabarima” (which translates to Man-woman in the Ghanaian twi dialect). They are also body shamed and mocked for their masculine demeanour.

Faraday was no exception, but managed to develop into a promising attacker.

Fast forward to 2019.

Early signs of mental health issues became apparent in 2019 when Faraday started playing for Ridge City Football Club in Accra. The coach at the time refused to field her and that shook her self-esteem.

“Coaches in Ghana can be verbally abusive," said Faraday. "I remember the Ridge City coach condemning me for being a university student and competing with the little opportunities the underprivileged girls on the team had. That made me feel very bad.”

She suppressed those feelings of hurt and frustration as, to her eyes, there was no one she could confide in who would understand.

“Everything was bottled up in me. I wrote my feelings down and eventually the coach was sacked and a new one appointed. Things were getting well and then COVID came," she recalled.

"Football is over for almost everyone. We are home and I have lost the one thing that makes me happy.”

Athletes around the world opened up how the pandemic had affected and challenged their mental health. To deal with these feelings, Faraday started writing down her thoughts in a journal which she said helped her a lot.

But the feeling of emptiness would not go away.

Faraday could not put a finger on what was wrong with her, thinking it was a fleeting phase.

In 2020, she released a powerful spoken word composition called “Echoes from the Past”, a raw emotional description of the struggles Ghanaian women face in football.

She was on the radar of former Black Queens Coach Mercy Tagoe for a national team call-up, and that of the U-20 coach Youssif Bassigi, but those opportunities came to a stop when COVID struck.

Faraday questioned her decision to build her whole life around football, asking herself what other activities she could possibly be doing.

A betrayal from her best friend coupled up with the gloomy days of COVID sent her into a downward spiral with the footballer doubting whether she could ever return to her old self.

Faraday developed eating and sleeping disorders, lost interest in most activities - including football - and gained a lot of weight.

“The system was hard and I couldn’t find my way through. To top it all off, I had no emotional support and that broke me,” Faraday revealed.

Social isolation has proven to be a major contributor to depression in footballers with COVID triggering this in a number of athletes.

Recognising symptoms and seeking help

The negative thoughts persisted until she could no longer tolerate it.

“When I returned to training in 2021, I was still not feeling like myself. I had gained so much weight and my teammates made fun of me. I broke down again, I had migraines and sleepless nights, and accepted that this was a mental breakdown. I accepted it and then decided to seek help,” said Faraday who chose to leave social media.

Former Ghana defender Anthony Baffoe, the founder of the Professional Footballers Association of Ghana (PFAG), reached out to her and insisted that she should open up to team authorities about her struggles.

Faraday, who signed for Ghana Women’s Premier League side Police Ladies in October 2021, approached the team counsellor for help.

It turned out to be the right decision and saw encouraging changes after just a month of therapy.

“I didn’t know the symptoms of depression at the time," she admitted. "I remember having migraines, unexplained dizziness and decided to Google my symptoms. This fear led me to demand MRI scans and full body check-ups to clear my doubts although my therapist advised it was nothing."

As she waited for the test results, dark thoughts crept into her mind. What if she was diagnosed with a terminal illness?

The results came back negative, and Faraday continued talking to her therapist until her mental state improved.

“I feel better compared to before. I get anxious sometimes, but I feel it is normal,” she said.

Following her own challenging experience, Faraday is commited to help other women footballers facing mental health issues through her spoken word pieces.

She is about to release an EP called “Bayor” featuring women footballers from across Africa talking about the daily struggles they face in the sport they have loved since childhood.

As well as continuing her own football career, Faraday - via her 'Echoes from Faraday' collective - seeks to encourage girls to take up football through artistic endeavours as well as visits to football academies.

At the end of September, she and Liverpool FC international Academy coach Steven Appleton went to the newly-established Okyeman Girls Football Academy in Apedwa.

And, as she says on her website, her goal is to "create an all-inclusive artistic community, to support the mental health of women footballers in Africa".