GPs to prescribe free tickets to Dale Vince's football club
Patients at surgeries in Gloucestershire will be given the chance to attend games at National League side Forest Green Rovers, which Mr Vince has owned since 2010.
The Ecotricity owner came up with the plan with Dr Simon Opher, a GP who is now Labour MP for Stroud. Dr Opher has pioneered social prescribing instead of medication for patients with mild or moderate depression, and has previously prescribed comedy and gardening.
He said that on average, four out of five patients stick with the prescribed activities, the benefits of which include reducing loneliness.
Dr Opher said: 'I do think there's something about watching football which does give you a sense of community.
'I think one of the biggest problems in our society is social isolation.
'It's really quite toxic, actually, and it's created in the modern world by social media.
'Pubs aren't so popular, we don't get out as much, we don't live in extended families, so that is very bad for you.
'You can quantify it, it's the same health risk as smoking about 20 cigarettes a day. It's really bad.
'One of the things here is just getting people out and socialising.'
He added: 'Football isn't going to be for everyone. Nothing is, but we need a range of options.
'Football is about socialising and roaring on your team, getting excited, taking yourself out of your own life for a short while, and living through something else.'
Dr Opher has previously spoken about his concerns about the overprescription of antidepressants.
He said: 'If you've got severe depression, then I would always recommend antidepressants, but a large majority of people have got what they call mild to moderate depression, and the tendency at the moment is to give them tablets, because there's no mental health support really. It can take six months to get it, and you feel like you need to do something.
'That's why we've got to a stage where we've got 8.7 million people on antidepressants, so we need to try something else.'
Patients at a dozen surgeries near Forest Green's The New Lawn ground in Nailsworth will be given the chance to go to a game, with the tickets donated free by Forest Green.
The initiative is planned to run for the whole season, beginning with the side's first home game against Yeovil Town on August 16.
And while Dr Opher believes the social side will help, there is no guarantee of success on the pitch to lift the spirits.
Forest Green were relegated from League Two last season after losing on penalties in the playoffs.
In the last 15 years, Mr Vince has turned it into the world's first vegan and carbon-neutral football club.The long-time non-league club reached League One before suffering two back-to-back relegations.
Mr Vince is best known for founding the green energy company Ecotricity, which previously donated £5m to the Labour Party.
'It's easy to spiral downwards'
He said: 'I think it'd be a great thing if football clubs up and down the country could reach out to people and do this.
'Men typically don't really talk about their issues, that's the thing, and you get loneliness and things like that as well.
'I've had periods of my life where I've been a bit fed up, and excluded … a bit down from time to time, it's easy to spiral downwards when you're not in contact with people and I just wanted to do something with that.
'Forest Green has been one of the best experiences of my life, and I'm keen to share that.'
Dr Opher's scepticism towards widespread antidepressant prescription came after he began his career as a GP in 1995.
'I'd started seeing there's a lot of people depressed out there, a lot of people with low mood, so I started putting a lot of them on antidepressants or referring them to mental health,' he said.
'Quite a few of them, one in four, maybe even more, would just come back no better, but with intractable problems.
'What I realised is that tablets didn't help them, we had nothing to help them.
'I thought we needed to try something different and do a different behaviour.'
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