Sport's Appeal | Matt Butler & Henry O'Connell | Evolving Psychiatry #58

Sport, and particularly football, captures billions of people's support. Why are our psychologies so captivated by these games? And could they even be used for improving mental health?The guests today are co-authors on the paper "The people’s game: evolutionary perspectives on the behavioural neuroscience of football fandom".Henry O’Connell is a returning guest: he is a consultant psychiatrist and Clinical Director at HSE Portlaoise, Clinical Professor at the University of Limerick, founding chair of the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland's Evolutionary Psychiatry SIG, and now Co-Chair of the WPA Section on Evolutionary Psychiatry. He is also author of Evolution and Psychiatry: Clinical Cases. Matt Butler is the lead author of the key paper of today's episode. He's a Wellcome Doctoral Clinical Research Fellow at King's College London and a specialist registrar in psychiatry at South London & Maudsley hospitals. His PhD is on psilocybin in functional neurological disorder.This podcast is financially supported by the Human Ecology Group of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.