The NHS is running mental health sessions for distressed fans of Bury FC following an outpouring of grief at the club’s expulsion from the football league.

The future of the 134-year-old club was thrown into grave doubt with the decision last week to expel it from the league after 125 years.

The news was met with shock and dismay in the club’s hometown, in Greater Manchester, where generations of families have supported the Shakers and compared the loss to a family bereavement.

The local NHS trust will on Friday host a mental health support session in Bury for up to 80 people “experiencing emotional distress or upset” at the club’s demise in a service believed to be the first of its kind in Britain.

The wellbeing meeting will be run by Bury Healthy Minds, a mental health service run by Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, and there are plans for additional sessions for fans in the coming weeks.

Kate Kubacki, a team leader at Bury Healthy Minds, said she saw a need for the service to help people cope with the loss and that Bury FC was “not just a football club”.

She said: “While some people might say it’s only the loss of a football club, it’s more than a football club. It’s been a way of life, it’s their social support, it’s their social networks, it’s something they do on a regular basis – it gets them out, it gets them active.

“For a lot of people who have been going to the football club for a number of years, it’s loss of friends and community that people are experiencing. It will be felt across a number of families.”

Kubacki said the a number of people had contacted Bury Healthy Minds asking it what support it could provide for fans of the club, which faces liquidation without a successful takeover.

She added: “We’d had people contacting the service asking what support we could put on, we’ve had requests through social media outlets asking what our response is going to be to what happened at the football club.”

Kubacki said the session would not be a forum to vent about financial issues at the club but would be about wellbeing and coping with loss.

A rescue coalition led by Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has applied for Bury FC to be allowed to return to the football league next season. The alternative would mean the club would collapse into liquidation and have to begin life as a so-called “phoenix club” in non-league football.