In the UR series Idrottens himmel och helvete, Mattias Höglund has told about eating disorders caused by the culture in ice hockey.
When it was at its worst, the 19-year-old from Leksand could not even get out of bed.
It took six months in hospital before life turned for the better.
And hockey must take great responsibility for detecting eating disorders in time, says former star Jonathan Hedström:
- It is a large number of people in the dark who have problems with eating disorders, he says.
Affected Mattias Höglund remembers how it started:
- I was told by a trainer that I would lose weight so that I would be faster and more mobile on the ice.
"Remove the weights"
Jonathan Hedström has played in both the NHL and SHL, and today lectures on mental illness.
He believes that there are quick ways to tackle the problem of eating disorders:
- If I had to decide, I would remove above all the weigh-ins, every day of the week.
They make you compare yourself to each other and have nothing to do with how good you are as a hockey player.
The mental part, we work very little with in hockey.
There we could save many on the way, says Hedström.
The Swedish Ice Hockey Association has acted.
- It feels good that we are now building this into our coaching education so that coaches get early knowledge of what to look for and have a plan to identify individuals and how we should then work, says Anders Wahlström, head of children and youth at the association .
- I do not see it (which has emerged) as criticism of hockey, I think this can happen no matter how much we do.
I think it is important that we look at how people feel and that we see the people behind the hockey player.
Then we can find the parts that do not work.
- We have a tradition of tests, which I think we need to have, but the question is how they are handled.
I think there is a lot to learn there.