At the U.S. Open, it's all right to open up about mental health
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, left, speaks along with Naomi Osaka, center, and Michael Phelps, during a forum on mental health during U.S. Open on Wednesday. Credit: AP/Mary Altaffer
There are images that get chiseled into our brains: Michael Phelps, face tilted skyward and looking like some sort of demigod, his Olympic medals around his neck and dangling from both his arms, biceps to wrist.
Or Naomi Osaka, grinning widely, a large mass of curls atop her head, holding up the Australian Open trophy — her guileless charm palpable, and superseded only by her immense talent.
Even if you haven’t seen the photos, it’s easy to conjure them up, because these are the great athletes of our time. They swim really fast or hit balls impossibly hard. They are Aaron Judge or Lionel Messi or Serena Williams — first and last name, because that’s what we do with famous people we sort of know, but not really.
Pro athletes, it all seems to say, they’re absolutely not like us.
Except: What about the time Osaka cried after winning her first grand slam at Flushing Meadows in 2018, the crowd booing after she defeated Williams during a tense and controversial match? Or the flak she got after pulling out of the French Open to deal with her mental health?
What about the days after Phelps’ DUI arrest in 2014, when the most decorated Olympian of all time said he simply didn’t want to live anymore?
What about CC Sabathia or Pete Alonso, or anybody else who's had the fortitude to publicly say that they're not OK?
“My loneliness looks like a dark room and it’s closing, and I felt alone a lot in the pandemic,” Phelps said Wednesday as part of the U.S. Open’s mental health forum. “I just want to make sure we’re all doing this together . . . One in four people struggle with some kind of mental health [issue]. How come one in every four people aren’t talking about it?”
Usually, when we talk about pro athletes and mental health, there’s a camp that thinks it’s a vital and necessary conversation, and one that says that these multi-millionaires should suck it up and play. No shock: I’m in the former category.
But there’s more than that.
It can be easy for all of us to focus too much on the “athlete” part of this equation. Their lives are bright and glossy and very much in the public eye; their failures are magnified, and one wrong step means mass vilification — something only exacerbated by social media. Of course their mental health might suffer.
That’s useful context, but it’s limited, because in the end, Phelps said his darkest moments weren’t when he was vying for gold, but when he had to reckon with himself as a person rather than just a swimmer. Osaka, who also spoke Wednesday, said she felt deeply lonely during her pregnancy. Sabathia has previously spoken about getting sober for his family. Alonso has written that he has PTSD after a spring training car crash.
Sometimes, the most comforting thing people can hear is that others have felt what they’re feeling, and these anecdotes can have that power.
So, for the record: Every synapse in your brain can be trying to tell you otherwise, but you are not alone.
Like Phelps, there can be a moment when you don’t quite recognize yourself. You can feel disconnected and isolated, you can struggle with being there for your family, or you can even simply have to deal with the bad, dumb luck of profound and unexpected trauma.
But mental illness thrives in the dark, and there's power in talking about it.
Athletes like Phelps and Osaka have the platform, and that will always be important, but it should serve as motivation for the rest of us to shatter a taboo that has no place in a healthy society.
“It’s not just about community leaders . . . t’s also about people in the communities themselves — moms and dads who might choose to talk about mental health and get help themselves, that sends a message to their kids,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy at the USTA's panel event. “When teachers or a boss at work or a co-worker decides that they’re going to seek that help, that sends a message to people around them that hey, this is OK to do.”
This isn’t a small thing. People understandably don't like talking about suicide, and we could shroud this discussion in every euphemism under the sun, but that does nothing to diminish a deadly stigma.
Suicide was the 11th leading cause of death in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a year that saw an estimated 1.7 million reported attempts, per the American Institute for Suicide Prevention. That’s also the year that the suicide mortality rate jumped 4%, to 14.1 per 100,000 individuals, the largest one-year increase in 20 years, according to the CDC. Men are nearly four times more likely than women to take their own lives.
There’s no easy answer to this crisis, though Murthy had some advice: (1) Contact the toll-free Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (988), (2) enlist the help of psychologists and psychiatrists, and if doing it in person is too much, try telehealth, and (3) use a “buddy system” and take the hard step of asking friends for help. That last one helped him immeasurably, Phelps said.
Oh, and keep talking about it — regardless of platform (or athletic prowess).
“I still feel like there’s a really big stigma against mental health," Osaka said. "I know Iga [Swiatek], she travels with her psychologist and obviously she’s No. 2 [ranked women’s tennis player], but she was No. 1 for a very long time. Obviously, it’s helping her a lot and I think more people should know that there are so many benefits to talking about what you’re going through.”
It can be the hardest step. Harder, maybe, than pushing your body on a court or in the water. But at least, when necessary, it’s something we all have the ability to do.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.