The Mental Health Awakening Has Reached the Sports World — Now What?
We all expected Simone Biles to be the story of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The greatest gymnast of all time, seeking yet more hardware on the world’s biggest stage. Before the Games, it seemed like the narrative was already written, and the only question on people’s minds was about how high, exactly, her scores would soar.
Sometimes, though, reality doesn’t follow the script. After one vault attempt in the team final, Biles was forced to withdraw as she battled the twisties, a mental block that causes gymnasts to lose track of their bodies in the air while attempting twisting elements. Later, Biles would cite it as a safety and mental health issue, calling the experience “petrifying.” She ultimately withdrew from the all-around final and several event finals as well, finishing the Games with a team silver medal and a bronze on beam.
It certainly wasn’t the Olympics the gymnast had envisioned, but it had, arguably, an even bigger impact than if she’d performed in typical Biles fashion. Her decision to prioritize herself and her mental health had a palpable ripple effect. The world of elite sports — notorious for its rigid expectations for athletes to “push through” any obstacle — was confronted with a woman who would not, or could not, put competition above her own well-being.
Over the past few years, the conversation around mental health in sports has become impossible to ignore. More and more athletes — and women athletes, in particular — are standing up for their mental wellness. Naomi Osaka has spoken openly about her anxiety since 2018 and even took a break from tennis to focus on her mental health in 2021. In the face of disappointment during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, skier Mikaela Shiffrin chose honesty and self-compassion while opening up about her grief after the sudden death of her father. Gymnast Suni Lee has shared candidly her experience with impostor syndrome and anxiety, even after winning Olympic gold in Tokyo. The landscape of mental health in sports is changing, and women are often at the forefront.
There’s a reason this transformation is taking place now: the stakes have never felt higher. This spring, several NCAA women athletes died by suicide — star players and standout students who often appeared fine to their friends and family. Katie Meyer was a goalkeeper for Stanford’s soccer team; Sarah Shulze was a runner at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Lauren Bernett was a catcher for James Madison University’s softball team. The International Olympic Committee has reported that 35 percent of elite athletes experience a mental health issue like disordered eating, burnout, depression, or anxiety at some stage in their careers, while a 2021 study of 186 elite Canadian athletes put the number at nearly 42 percent.
At this moment, many of us are asking: What will it take to create actual change in the way sports handle mental health issues? And, when you consider the amount of personal and societal pressure that weighs on the shoulders of elite athletes, what does “good” mental health in sports even look like?
Around the time of the Tokyo Olympics, Jasmine Blocker was struggling. A sprinter who ran at Princeton and earned a relay gold medal from the 2019 world championships, the 29-year-old says she’s lived with anxiety and depression since her preteen years. She’d been able to manage her symptoms, she says, right up until the pandemic.
The isolation brought on by COVID was “life-altering,” Blocker tells POPSUGAR, and as the Olympics kicked off in Tokyo in July 2021, her depression and anxiety were coming to a tipping point. She wasn’t competing herself, but as the Games drew the usual intense attention, she recalls feeling “lazy” and berating herself for having panic attacks. “This is ridiculous,” she remembers thinking. “I need to get it together.”
But when Biles withdrew from Olympic events to protect her mental health, Blocker’s mindset began to shift. “This is a real thing,” she says she realized. “It’s justified to [say], ‘It’s not safe for me to do it because my head’s not right.’ It’s justified to [say], ‘I have to take care of myself first so that I can be there for others.'”
Blocker says the feeling of validation stemming from Biles’s actions was a major factor in her decision to enroll in a partial hospitalization program (PHP) on the recommendation of her therapist. PHP is a structured mental health treatment program that patients participate in several hours a day, three to five days a week, for anywhere from a few weeks to several months. Distinct from full-time hospitalization or an in-patient program, patients return home every night after a day that might include therapy (individual and group), practice building coping skills, and mental health evaluations.