11 Olympians Who’ve Opened Up About Mental Health

Simone Biles

Simone Biles faced a nightmare scenario in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when she was forced to withdraw from the team and all-around competitions due to a case of the “twisties,” a dangerous phenomenon that occurs when a gymnast loses their sense of where they are in the air. Unable to compete, Biles felt “the weight of the world” on her shoulders, she wrote on Instagram. In a 2024 interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Biles said her twisties were due to emotional trauma after being sexually abused by ex-USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. “Compressing all of this shit for so many years, it just unfolded,” she said. “You can’t compress trauma.”

Biles was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, saying “it felt like I held a lot a lot of the guilt that wasn’t mine to hold. And I learned through therapy, yes this is not my guilt my hold, but to convince myself that was really, really hard. And I think I’m still working on that in therapy.”

Now, Biles often speaks on the importance of therapy, telling reporters after her Paris 2024 all-around win that she spoke with her therapist that morning before the competition. “[I’m] just making sure I’m mentally well,” she explained, according to People. “I think you see that our on the competition floor.” Later that day, she posted an Instagram photo of herself having a quiet moment at the competition, legs crossed and eyes closed, as though meditating. “Mental health matters,” Biles wrote in the caption.

Jordan Chiles

Jordan Chiles’ bubbly personality has made her beloved among gymnastics fans, but the US gymnast has dealt with lingering trauma from her years as a young gymnasts. It centers, she says, around the pressure to reach a certain weight. “I was getting weighed. I was told I could only eat certain things,” Chiles told Teen Vogue in 2024. “There were a lot of things that I was told because I had to ‘look a certain way.’ But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized we’re human. Our bodies go through different changes.”

Chiles now sees a sports psychologist to improve her mental health and her relationship with food. “It took me a while to actually ask for help because my sport does teach us to be independent,” she said. “But when I finally did, I was at ease with my mental health and being able to say, ‘It’s okay to ask for help.’ I feel more confident in myself and I’m able to be the Jordan that I’ve always wanted to be when I first started gymnastics.”

Michael Phelps

Recognized as the greatest Olympian of all time, US swimmer Michael Phelps is the only Olympian to win eight golds in one Olympic Games, holding a whopping 28 medals total. But in the midst of achieving athletic greatness, Phelps began experiencing intense depression and anxiety, especially after the 2004 Olympics. “[You] work so hard for four years to get to that point, and then it’s like you’re…at the top of the mountain, you’re like what the hell am I supposed to do?” he told Healthline in a 2022 interview. “Where am I supposed to go? Who am I?”

He jumped back into training and “compartmentalized those feelings,” he said, but they continued to “reappear whenever they wanted until I was able to get a better understanding of who I am.” After his second DUI, in 2014, Phelps reached a low point. “I felt like I didn’t want to be alive anymore,” he recalled, feeling like he was creating “stress and issues” for those around him. Phelps ultimately decided it was time to “try to find a different route” and checked into a treatment center for 45 days.

Phelps continued seeing a therapist after leaving in-patient treatment and said he “started feeling like a person” instead of just a swimmer. He continues speaking out about mental health and prioritizing his own by exercising, continuing therapy, and using self-care strategies like journaling. He’s also accepted that his depression and anxiety will never “disappear,” but that he can manage them now. “It makes me,” Phelps explained. “It’s always going to be a part of me.”

Aly Raisman

US gymnast Aly Raisman has been open about her mental health journey in the years since coming forward about being sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar, telling Today in 2020 that she continues to struggle with PTSD. “[I’m] really prioritizing my mental health and prioritizing self-compassion,” she said. “It’s hard to put into words how much it’s impacted me, the trauma and the PTSD. It’s translated to different parts of my life.” One of her major struggles, she said, is learning to “really trust my gut and believing myself when I feel like something is wrong.”

Learning to trust herself again has been a main focus of Raisman’s time in therapy. “I’ve learned that the best thing to do is just to ask for help and to communicate with people because then people can help me,” she said.

Suni Lee

“My mental health is the No. 1 priority,” US gymnast Sunisa Lee told Elle in 2024. The 2020 all-around gold medalist said she’s learned to prioritize therapy and “asking for help when I need it” after her first Olympics, when she experienced imposter syndrome and fears that she “didn’t deserve to win” the all-around title, she told ESPN in 2022.

In addition to therapy, Lee also turns to strategies like journaling and affirmations to help her deal with pressure and stress.

Sunny Choi

The first female breakdancer to qualify for the Olympics for Team USA, Sunny Choi’s path to Paris 2024 wasn’t a straightforward one. From high school until she quit her corporate job to pursue breaking full-time, Choi felt pressured to follow a very particular path. “I was a really high-performing gymnast,” she told SheKnows before the 2024 Olympics. “I got into an Ivy League. I went to Wharton. I didn’t even want to do business, but it was because I knew I’d be financially stable afterwards.” Eventually, Choi realized the pattern: “I had been for so long suppressing my personal desires in order to check off all the boxes that I thought would make me successful in life… I was just trekking forward, shoving things aside, putting those blinders on and a little happy face and showing up to work every single day.”

The athlete experienced “cycles of burnout and depression” before starting therapy to learn how to take care of her mental health. Now, her strategies include going on walks without her phone and hot vinyasa yoga classes. Fully embracing her sport has also helped. “Breaking has been the catalyst for so much of my personal growth” Choi said.

Tara Davis-Woodhall

Team USA long jumper Olympian Tara Davis-Woodhall spoke to NBC in 2024 about being in a “really dark place mentally” a few years earlier. “I just didn’t want to be here anymore,” she recalled. “I was hitting my lowest time in life and not leaving my room for a week and just being super sad.”

Davis-Woodhall was able to pull herself out of it with the help of “a lot of people in my corner” and a decisive mindset shift. “I had the choice to become happy,” she said. “You have the choice to be anyone you want in the world. And that’s when I finally saw the light again.” Now, Davis-Woodhall sees a psychologist and a therapist to help her stay on top of her mental health.

Caeleb Dressel

After a spectacular showing at the 2020 Olympics, swimmer Caeleb Dressel made the decision to step away from the sport in 2022. “It was blatantly obvious that I needed to get help if I wanted to live a healthy, happy, joyful life,” Dressel told WWD in 2024. It was eight months before the 10-time Olympic medalist returned to training, this time with a renewed focus on mental health.

Dressel has been seeing a therapist at least once a week since 2022 and stays off of social media as much as he can. “The mental side of the sport has been the biggest difference for me this year,” Dressel shared. “Tuning into my mental chatter, welcoming it, whether it be negative or positive. It has helped me deal with pressure and media and outside forces I can’t control.”

Jade Carey

Gymnast Jade Carey sought therapy after a series of difficult competition losses in 2023. “I’ve never really had a year like that in gymnastics before,” Care told Women’s Health in 2024, saying she “wasn’t feeling myself” after falling in competitions and not being named to the US World Championship team. To get to a better place, Carey spoke with a sports psychiatrist from the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee.

“I was like, ‘If they help me, great! If they don’t, they don’t,’ and I ended up really loving [my psychiatrist] and talking to her every single week,” Carey said. “She just made me feel more confident in myself and my abilities.”

Naomi Osaka

Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open in 2021 to protect her mental health, and has since taken more breaks from tennis to prioritize her wellness. “I have suffered long bouts of depression since the US Open in 2018,” Osaka wrote on social media in 2021, adding that she gets “huge waves of anxiety” before speaking to the press. Later that year, before competing in the Tokyo Olympics, Osaka wrote an op-ed for Time discussing the importance of mental health.

“It has become apparent to me that literally everyone either suffers from issues related to their mental health or knows someone who does,” Osaka wrote candidly. “The number of messages I received from such a vast cross section of people confirms that. I think we can almost universally agree that each of us is a human being and subject to feelings and emotions.”

Noah Lyles

A few hours after winning the men’s 100-meter at the Paris 2024 Olympics, American sprinter Noah Lyles took to social media to share what the accomplishment meant. “I have Asthma, allergies, dyslexia, ADD, anxiety, and Depression,” he wrote on X. “But I will tell you that what you have does not define what you can become.”

Lyles had been open about his disappointing performance at the 2020 Olympics and how low his mental health had gotten during the pandemic. “I couldn’t get my needs out. I need to be active, I need personal connections, I need to be able to touch people… that’s a love language and something that people need and I’m definitely one of those people and I wasn’t able to get it,” Lyles told Olympics.com in 2024. Lyles relies on therapy and medication to maintain his mental health, telling fans on X in 2020 that he had started taking antidepressants as well. “That was one of the best decisions I have made in a while,” he wrote. “Since then I have been able to think with out the dark undertone in mind of nothing matters.”