ZHANGJIAKOU, China (AP) — At the Tokyo Olympics, mental health was the star of the show. Amplified by some of the best athletes in the world, it rocked those Games and made everyone take notice.
Six months later, in Beijing, the conversation has evolved: the topic comes up regularly, but no one is surprised when it does.
Many athletes have talked about their fights, but often in a simple way, with nothing to see here. A difficulty is mentioned, then the conversation continues. After star gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from competition in Tokyo because she wasn’t in the right frame of mind, retired Olympic swimming phenom Michael Phelps memorably said that “it’s okay not to be okay.”
And now, thanks in part to people like Biles, it seems like it’s okay to talk about it, too.
“I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned after the last Olympics is to be as open as possible,” snowboarding sensation Chloe Kim told reporters after winning gold in the half-pipe event on Thursday.
It was Kim’s second gold at an Olympics. He initially tossed away the first one, obtained in Pyeongchang four years ago, a story that epitomizes the dissonance between the cheerful face many champions show the world and the torments they face behind the scenes.
“After my last Olympics, I put pressure on myself to be perfect at all times, and that would cause a lot of problems at home. I would be very sad and depressed all the time when I was home,” Kim told reporters after easily securing the top spot on the podium but also failing to pull off a new stunt he is working on.
“I’m happy to talk about whatever it is I’ve been experiencing,” he said. “Honestly, it’s very healthy for me.”
It wasn’t just Kim who was talking about it. After snowboarder Jamie Anderson, who came to Beijing as a two-time defending downhill style champion, finished ninth, she posted on Instagram that her “mental health and clarity just haven’t been up to par.”
Skier Mikaela Shiffrin was particularly honest after failing to finish either of her first two races in events that are her specialties. She said that she had been feeling pressure, something that every elite athlete feels and is different from the more complicated mental health issues that many have been talking about.
But Shiffrin also plumbed greater depths, acknowledging that she was angry at her father, who died in 2020, for not being there to support her.
After finally managing to complete a race on Friday, surprisingly even that had become an open question for the star, he posted on Instagram about the ups and downs of the competition.
“There is a lot of disappointment and heartache in the finish area,” he wrote.
When various elite athletes stumbled in Beijing, they were often quick to remind the world that they, too, are human. Shiffrin even has a paid post on Instagram, in which the tagline is, “Yes, I’m human.” A far cry from the usual boasting of athletes as being much more than that.
This is what many hoped after Tokyo: that as more athletes recognized what they face behind the scenes, the stigma around talking about mental health would disappear and the issue would simply become one more challenge in the mix.
“I think it’s really normalized with so many athletes talking about their mental health, and there’s been a huge push for parity with mental health and physical health,” said Jess Bartley, director of mental health services for Team USA. USA
“I think in the experience that I’ve had with a lot of these athletes, it’s really soothing to be able to talk about it, for people to understand, for the audience to understand what might be coming up that might have affected their performance. she said. “Just the same way you hear about a sprained ankle.”
Bartley works with athletes to prepare how they will respond to questions about their mental health just as he works with them to prepare for their performance. Some feel comfortable revealing those struggles; others don’t.
Louie Vito, a snowboarder who competed for Italy in Beijing, is placed in the last field. He is glad that mental health is being talked about more openly; He readily admits that framing some of his struggles that way was eye-opening for him, but he’d rather keep much of it private.
“I think some people would prefer to deal with their mental battles in their inner circle,” he said. “To me, it’s not right or wrong how you handle it, as long as you’re aware and it doesn’t become detrimental to you. I don’t think you have to talk about it in public.”
And he acknowledged that many people are still embarrassed to talk about these issues.
Yet many continue to speak out, encouraged by a generation of younger athletes determined not only to be heard but to ensure that this issue is no longer something that is dramatically revealed, but simply addressed like anything else important.
Amanda Fialk, clinical director of The Dorm, a mental health treatment program for youth, is encouraged by the increasingly open conversations taking place. But she warns that real change will take much longer to take hold.
She stresses that there are vast cultural differences, between countries and between communities within a given country, that affect access to and stigma around mental health care.
“I’m also aware that old habits are hard to die,” said Fialk, who was a competitive figure skater when she was younger. not just be a change, but become a new normal.”
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Sarah DiLorenzo, a London-based journalist for The Associated Press, is assigned to the Beijing Olympics. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sdilorenzo
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