Nobody immune to mental illness
Athletes share their mental health battles
Michael Phelps locked himself in his bedroom for four days three years ago. He had been arrested a second time for DUI. He was despondent and adrift. He thought about suicide.
“I didn’t want to be alive,” he tells USA TODAY Sports. “I didn’t want to see anyone else. I didn’t want to see another day.”
Family and friends — “a lifesaving support group,” Phelps calls them — urged him to seek professional help. He got it. And now he wants others who are suffering from mental health issues to find the help they need.
Some will scoff at this. Phelps is the golden boy of the Olympic Games. Fame and fortune are his. Really, what could be so bad in his life?
That is never the right question. People from all walks of life suffer from a range of mental illnesses. Roughly 44 million American adults experienced some form of mental illness in
2015 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), according to estimates by the National Institute of Mental Health. That’s nearly one in five people
18 or older.
Athletes might be at increased risk, according to research by Lynette Hughes and Gerard Leavey of the Northern Ireland Association for Mental Health, who found that factors such as inju- ries, competitive failure and overtraining can lead to psychological distress.
NBA legend Jerry West has struggled for decades with dark bouts of depression and low selfesteem. Sometimes people call him brave for speaking openly about it. He says that’s not courageous so much as honest.
“Some people hide their pain,” West says. “I’m not proud of the fact that I don’t feel good about myself a lot of the time, but it’s nothing I’m ashamed of.”
New York Giants wide receiver Brandon Marshall calls mental health awareness and acceptance “the civil rights movement of our era.” He was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 2011 and spoke about the importance of destigmatizing mental illness in March at an NFL owners meeting. Giants owner John Mara said you could have heard a pin drop: “He raised our consciousness.”
Athletes face pressure to perform, often in the face of intense public scrutiny, while competing in a culture that inhibits them from seeking the help they need.
“For the longest time, I thought asking for help was a sign of weakness, because that’s kind of what society teaches us,” Phelps says. “That’s especially true from an athlete’s perspective. If we ask for help, then we’re not this big macho athlete that people can look up to. Well, you know what? If someone wants to call me weak for asking for help, that’s their problem. Because I’m saving my own life.”