Mental Health in the Spotlight
“Mental health” is an umbrella term that’s often casually thrown around and used to encapsulate struggles ranging from pre-competition jitters to debilitating mental blocks.
It’s not a new topic, but recently it was thrust into the spotlight when gymnast Simone Biles, 2016 Olympic gold medalist, and heavy Tokyo favorite, removed herself from Olympic competition, citing mental health as the reason behind her exit.
Suddenly, everyone has an opinion.
Lots of fans were supportive and championed Biles for prioritizing her mental health, commending it as an important step forward in destigmatizing mental health in the sports world.
But, the move was also met with fierce criticism.
I’m not a gold medal winning Olympic champion, but as a professional athlete who has dedicated a lifetime to my sport and also struggled with mental health, I cannot imagine how hard it was to consciously choose to step out of competition.
Online, people have called her “weak”, a “shame to the country” and much worse, all implying that she couldn’t handle the pressure.
In the past, Biles has performed and succeeded in world competition despite broken toes, sprained ankles, and even a kidney stone. I think any self-respecting athlete can agree that she is not weak.
As a professional, oftentimes one must push through injuries if they aren’t disabling. If Simone Biles had broken her hand, no one would have questioned her withdrawal from the competition. Her struggle with “the twisties” should be seen no differently. But because it was not a visible impairment, it was a controversial move.
Most of the time you can’t see the way mental health affects a player, yet it is rarely given the attention or the pardon of traditional skin and bone injury. When an ankle is swollen to the size of a softball, or an arm is hanging funny, people have empathy. Unless someone is visibly having a panic attack, depression and anxiety can go undetected to the outside eye.
But that doesn’t mean we should ignore it.
Psychologists across the field agree that the “mental side of the game” accounts for anywhere between 50-90% of an athlete’s performance. This is especially true at the highest level. By the time you have reached the collegiate or professional level, you have spent years fine-tuning the physical tools you need to succeed, and performance comes down to mental edge.
Yet mental health often goes unaddressed in both professional and collegiate sports.
Despite participating in a Division I PAC-12 athletics program, I never had access to a sports psychologist during my collegiate career. Sadly, this is extremely common across college athletics.
If an athletic department operated without a physical trainer, there would be uproar, but unless athletic programs are swimming in extra cash, access to mental health care is often limited.
One of the most interesting critiques of Simone Biles’s Olympic performance is that her self removal sets a bad example for young athletes who aspire to greatness.
Traditionally in the sports world, we preach the necessity of mental toughness to athletes if they want to reach the highest level. That is absolutely still true. Grit is necessary, perseverance is necessary and if you’re a quitter, you won’t make it.
So again, people ask, what kind of example does it set for collegiate and youth athletes?
An important one.
Mental illness and mental toughness are not the same things, nor should they be treated as such.
Being able to identify symptoms of a mental illness, seeking help, and learning to perform in SPITE of its effects is an essential tool we can pass onto young athletes. Instead of pushing the narrative that Biles is a quitter, use the event to educate yourself and young athletes about mental health struggles and how they can play a role in sports.
If athletes can learn to acknowledge these illnesses just as they would injuries, they can start doing the work to improve the mental pillar of their game.
Just as athletes would strengthen muscles around a torn ACL or an unstable ankle, they can strengthen mental coping mechanisms and develop tools to prevent it from failing them in competition.
And even then, despite all the preparation, sometimes a mental health “injury” can occur in competition, as it did for Simone Biles. And that’s okay, injuries are a part of sports.
We have made great strides in the sports world towards destigmatizing mental health and understanding the role it plays in athletic performance. But, until our society can equate the mental pillar of sports to the physical pillar, we have work to do.
-Maggie