Clarke Carlisle has called for every club to have independent mental health experts to identify players who are suffering.
It comes after stars across multiple sports this summer have stepped away to address their issues. It also comes a week after an inquest found ex-Yeovil Town skipper Lee Collins took his own life.
Ahead of the new Premier League season, ex-PFA chairman Carlisle said: “Football needs a trained, qualified individual at every club who is independent of coaching and management.
“They need to be observing and proactively instigating touchpoints with players. They need to be the educated signpost to services that are necessary.
“Many clubs are still more likely to exile an underperforming player who could be struggling with mental health because some influential people high up still see them just as assets.
“I’ve seen it throughout my career. I've seen people having to go and train by themselves when the rest of the squad isn't there.
“Or maybe train with the youth team because they're seen as a problem individual.”
US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, Tennis superstar Naomi Osaka and cricketer Ben Stokes have all taken time out from their respective sports this summer to focus on their mental health.
Carlisle, who played for nine clubs between 1997 and 2013, is hopeful that Aston Villa and England star Tyrone Mings will inspire more footballers to speak out after revealing he sought help to address his insecurities after Euro2020.
“I'm hoping he is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Carlisle. “He is one of many who are saying that this is the way that we do things now. And we are seeing that with a number of other players. I think he's excellent.
“Will it encourage more players to do likewise? Well, if you don't have a trust or a faith in the system to do what it's supposed to do, you're not going to engage with it.
“Tyrone talks about his personal journey with a therapist. But not every player at every club is going to have that. The systems they have at their disposal, they don't have faith in and that's why we see people like Lee Collins taking his own life in a hotel room at 32 years of age.
“I have to give credit where it's due. But it is utterly nominal with regard to the size of the solution that's necessary. That credit is to Sporting Chance which is wonderful to have in crisis.
“But it has, what, six beds. You reflect that with a core need in football alone - because Sporting Chance covers multi sports - and it is wholly inadequate.
“You’ve also got a 24-hour counselling network at the PFA. Their Director of Player Welfare, Mickey Bennett, is running around because he is absolutely inundated with people not just wanting to access the services, but people who haven't got a clue where they are at the journey and need the help.
“Other than that, what you have is one or two decent wellbeing officers at one or two football clubs. But nothing that is uniform across the entire industry, where we can know that every player has access to the same comprehensive holistic services that will proactively intervene at a certain point.
“When you've got going on that descent, that downward spiral, you don't know that you're descending until you're down here. “But the third person can spot certain signs and symptoms when they appear.
“Especially when that person has industry-specific knowledge and even more when that person has a day to day understanding and interaction with you as an individual.”
