Simone Biles: Putting Your Needs First Wins The Gold Medal in Mental Health

If you haven’t heard or seen this story yet, Simone Biles (widely considered one of the greatest -if not the greatest - gymnasts of all time) stopped competing for the team event at the Tokyo Olympics 2021 due to mental health concerns.

I don’t pretend to know anything about gymnastics, other than something that they do looks cool, but I watched a few experts examine the vault event that Simone participated in prior to her decision to stop. The experts explained that her execution of the event was not correct, not what she had intended to do, and she could have gotten seriously injured as a result. Others have said that muscle memory allowed her to still land on her feet and saved her from such an injury.

When I heard that she decided to stop due to putting her mental health first, I applauded her decision. It could not have been an easy one, but she chose her health (both mental and physical) above continuing to compete in an event at the Olympics - something that high level athletes prepare for most of their lives!

As I basked in my own feelings towards it, I made the mistake of looking at some of the posts about this on Facebook. At first, I was encouraged to read so many comments in support of her and the understanding of the importance of caring for and prioritizing mental health. Then I kept reading and also found (far too many) comments from people saying that she “quit on her team,” “quit on her country,” “took a spot away from someone else who could have performed,” or “is a professional athlete and should be able to handle the pressure.”

There are oh so many issues with these types of statements. Opinions are just that, opinions. It’s okay that I don’t agree with those people, and it’s okay that they probably wouldn’t agree with me. However, spreading the idea that putting your mental health first is not as important as performing in the Olympics (or anything else) is harmful. It’s harmful because it continues the stigma of mental health and makes it less likely for others to put their mental health needs first.

Here are my thoughts in response to all of this:

"She quit on her team and her country.”

Oh boy, where to begin? She made the decision to set the boundaries she needed to not put her health at risk in the long run. At the end of the day, are the Olympics really that important? Are they more important than the wellbeing of any of the athletes? In my opinion, the answer is absolutely not.

“A professional athlete should be able to handle the pressure.”

This one gets a big ol’ eye roll from me. Sure, professional athletes have likely developed ways to manage high pressure situations because they have to in order to perform well in their roles. But professional athletes are HUMAN. Why do we, especially here in the United States, continue to put athletes on this pedestal of the highest praise and unrealistic expectations? They are but mere humans, like me and you. They are allowed to have off-days. They are allowed to believe they could handle the pressure and then it becomes too much. They are allowed to be human.

On top of the normal pressures of being a professional athlete, Simone has also been held to a higher standard because of her skill level, such as being underscored for highly difficult moves because her competitors are not able to meet her level of skill.

It has been explained that the powers that be (Olympic and other competition committees) want to keep the competition closer by not giving Simone the scores her work deserves because her scores have been, and would continue to be, well above everyone else. If you were being undervalued and punished for your ability, wouldn’t you be angry, frustrated, disappointed, discouraged, etc., too?

And if that's not enough (which it most certainly is), let’s not forget that we are still experiencing a global pandemic and many members of Team USA gymnastics, including Simone, have experienced trauma due to the sexual abuse that was taking place for decades. Also, based on our society and being a woman of color myself, I speculate that being a woman of color may have added further pressures, microaggressions, and possible traumas related to racism and sexism for Simone.

If she had a physical injury, would the response be the same?

The continued misunderstanding and internalized biases around mental health have been clear in some of the responses I have read. If she had stopped competing due to a physical injury, would the response be the same? Would your response be the same? If not, why is that? Why does physical injury recieve sympathy and well wishes, while mental illness receives crickets or criticism?

Mental health is health. It is just as important as any other form of health. For anyone who has been an athlete at any level, you know that your mental game is just as important as your physical game. Someone could be the absolute best athlete to ever live, but if their mental health is not well, they will not be able to perform well physically either.

Will this start happening more often?

As a multi-sport athlete for most of my childhood, I consider myself lucky that I always played for fun, even on club teams. The season before starting college I was offered a position on the best, most competitve club softball team in my area, and I turned it down. I wanted to continue playing with my friend on our other team, and I wanted to have fun. Not to mention, at 17 years old, I had already experienced a shoulder injury that would later need surgery and still causes chronic pain 13 years later.

Even since the time I was playing sports (which wasn’t that long ago), athletics in the United States have changed. It has become a high pressure cooker at younger and younger ages. To play at the high school, collegiate, or professional level, young people have to dedicate their lives to the sport for even a chance to compete. As young as late elementary school, some kids begin participating in club sports, which can be highly demanding, and have personal coaches and trainers. When do they get to be kids? When do they get to make mistakes without having an audience watching and critiquing them?

In a lot of ways, it can take the fun out of it much too early on in life. This type of atmosphere and expectation is hard on the minds and bodies of people at any age, but if this is starting even younger, how will people be able to last throughout an entire career as a professional athlete? Will we see more career-ending injuries at young ages? More athletes who need to rest and sit out of competitions due to the mental strain?

In early 2020, Marshawn Lynch, a professional football player, gave this advice to young players, “Take care of y’all’s bodies, take care of y’all’s chicken (money), take care of y’all’s mental.” Naomi Osaka, a professional tennis player, was recently fined for declining to take part in post-match interviews. She shared that her choice was one based on her mental wellbeing and also chose to withdraw from a major competition. And you’ve probably seen Michael Phelps, an Olympic swimmer, on commercials for Talkspace (Talkspace has it’s own set of issues for the mental health world, but that’s a discussion for another day).

It is encouraging to see more athletes, and other well-known people with a wide reach, talking more openly about mental health. My hope is that people at any stage of life and any level of sport will continue to address their mental health, but I also hope that it is acknowledged, respected, and taken care of early on and in a way that allows them to continue to participate in the sports that they love for as long as they’d like to.

If you don’t agree with what I have shared here, again it’s okay to have different opinions but, I encourage you to do some reflecting on your own thoughts and feelings towards mental health. It’s ok and admirable to acknowledge that you may have room to grow in any area and decide to learn more about it to become more knowledgeable and understanding. As a whole, we all need to do better in taking care of our own mental health needs and validating the experiences of others.