Making herself vulnerable, she joins other noteworthy athletes in pushing the once-taboo subject into the open.
Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal this week from the French Open stunned tennis. But her decision was also a potent example of a movement among elite athletes to challenge the age-old notion that they are, and must be, as peerless in mind as they are in body, untroubled by the scourge of mental illness. Ms. Osaka, the highest-paid female athlete in the world, who said she had faced “long bouts of depression” since she won the United States Open in 2018, was only the latest addition to the fast-expanding roster of renowned players across sports who have spoken out about mental health. Taken together, the disclosures by these athletes, who have sometimes been empowered by social media and word of one another’s experiences, have pushed the subject from the recesses of the sports world squarely toward the center of modern life’s biggest stages. And they are forcing the sports community to acknowledge that the pressures of competition have assuredly contributed to illnesses among some stars — and that those stars were never untouchable. “There’s more acceptance of the fact — and more understanding of the fact — that mental health is a real thing, and in the athletics realm, it takes serious bravery for these high-profile athletes to come out and use the word ‘depression’ or use the word ‘anxiety,’” said Jamey Houle, the lead sports psychologist at Ohio State. He was also an all-American gymnast there. “The vulnerability,” he added, “leads to doors being broken down, stigma shrinking a little bit more and people getting more help.” Before Ms. Osaka’s announcement on Monday, the swimmer Michael Phelps publicly discussed in recent years his history of depression and anxiety. The gymnast Aly Raisman has described her efforts to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder. Brandon Marshall, who spent 13 seasons in the N.F.L., has talked about his diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. The basketball players A’ja Wilson, DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love have spoken about their depression. Amanda Beard, who made her Olympic swimming debut in Atlanta when she was 14 and struggled with depression and self-injury, titled her 2012 memoir, “In the Water They Can’t See You Cry.” It was not all that long ago that many of those deeply personal stories were carefully hidden from public view.
