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New documentary details Olympians’ depression, suicide

Palm Beach Post - 8/3/2020

If you're like most folks, it slipped your mind that right now was when we were supposed to be in the heart of the 2020 Summer Olympics.

But last week, HBO viewers were reminded of the mental health toll that being an Olympian takes on its athletes -- regardless of whether they're medalists or not.

In the Michael Phelps-produced "The Weight of Gold," the 23-time Olympic medalist, who's been very open in recent years about his own mental health struggles, narrates the one-hour documentary and talks about how emotionally challenging everything about the Olympics is -- including the aftermath.

Equally as affecting are the candid interviews with such recognizable Olympians as speed skater Apolo Ohno, hurdler and bobsledder Lolo Jones, figure skaters Sasha Cohen and Gracie Gold, and snowboarder Shaun White, all of whom go into detail about their pre- and post-Games struggles.

<strong>Obsessive single-mindedness</strong>

Be it summer or winter sports, future Olympians are, by and large, cut from the same obsessive cloth -- and this personality trait appears early in life.

Archival interviews from their adolescence show Cohen, Ohno and Phelps all speaking with laser focus about their Olympic aspirations.

As adults, Ohno now recalls that "everything that's not catered to you performing at the highest level in sport is a nonstarter" and Cohen calls any non-skating-related activity -- school, friends, fun -- "an obstacle [to] push aside."

Such single-mindedness does not a balanced, well-adjusted person make.

But it is what future Olympians have come to see as their only path to the Games.

<strong>Financial pressure</strong>

And that brings up another mental-health stressor that outsiders almost never consider for Olympians: a lack of financial support from Team USA.

These world-class athletes receive a maximum monthly stipend of $1,700 -- and often less -- which can't possibly cover food, rent, training and living expenses.

The lucky very few might have sponsors but for the overwhelming majority of Team USA, while training for their sport, they also had to work part-time jobs, rely on family members or run up their credit cards.

As a youngster idolizing Olympians, Jones said she figured "they're on every cover of every magazine and you're thinking they're financially stable -- they have to be right? And fast-forward to my future, me trying to be an Olympic athlete, and I'm living off $7,000 a year."

Jones also recounts working at a gym and making a customer a smoothie while highlights of one of her recent races played on a nearby TV.

"Even if you're in a marquee sport and you do so well, you have a limited window to capitalize on, and to pay back training bills and try to earn some money," said Cohen. "But for most athletes, there's no money. There's no money at all."

Olympic skeleton racer Katie Uhlaender says that "every Olympic cycle I went into debt."

<strong>An 'overwhelming' experience -- and the pressure to perform</strong>

Once Olympians arrive at the Games -- their lifelong dream -- Phelps said the experience is nothing short of "overwhelming."

As is the pressure to perform.

"It's all you've done for the past 10 years. And now, for the next 40 seconds of our human lives, this moment will dictate whether you have gold or not," says Ohno.

Cohen describes it this way: "You get on an Olympic venue bus, and you go to the arena to compete, and you have this kind of epiphany that when you get back on this bus again tonight, your fate will have been sealed. Something will be written into history that can never be unwritten or rewritten."

Cohen, the overwhelming gold-medal favorite at the 2006 Olympics, famously fell twice during her long program and had to settle for a silver medal.

In the 2008 Olympics, Jones was about to win a gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles when she clipped the next-to-last hurdle, broke stride, and finished seventh.

"In my entire life -- training, racing, everything -- I've hit a hurdle maybe three times," says Jones.

<strong>Post-Games depression and suicidal ideation</strong>

Phelps believes some 80% of Olympians are depressed -- and even suicidal -- in the months and even years after the Games.

And he theorizes that so many of his fellow Olympians don't seek help for their depression is that the very personality traits that made them Olympians -- hard work, self-reliance, focus -- also make them feel they have to overcome their mental health struggles on their own.

"After every Olympics, win or lose, I've just felt like a dramatic emptiness," says snowboarder White. "There's this incredible crash. Nothing really matters as much anymore."

Jones speaks of "not wanting to be around anymore" and not being able to find any mental health support from the U.S. Olympic Committee or Team USA.

Likewise, figure skater Gold says "I mentioned to someone in the federation that actually I'm going through some really dark s--- right now" and was told she should try to find a therapist on her own.

Gold medal-winning bobsledder Steve Holcomb was filmed saying he didn't tell anyone when he first considered taking his own life because "I was worried people would see me as this fragile person, someone they didn't want around."

Holcomb cries while discussing the 2011 death by suicide of his friend and fellow Olympian, downhill skier Jeret "Speedy" Peterson.

Holcomb himself would die by suicide in 2017.

In fact, in the last decade, six Olympic-level athletes have died by suicide: Peterson and Holcomb; Olympic sports shooter Stephen Scherer in 2010; in 2019, both silver medal-winning cyclist Kelly Catlin and Olympic judo hopeful Jack Hatton; and in May Olympic bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic.

Gold asks "how many Olympians have to die before" before the USOC understands it has a suicide epidemic on its hands?

It should also be noted that not a single female U.S. gymnast was interviewed for "The Weight of Gold" -- and one can only imagine the lifelong mental health struggles that await the hundreds of female athletes who were sexually abused by the team's longtime physician, Dr. Larry Nassar. (In 2017 and 2018, Nassar was sentenced to hundreds of years in both federal and Michigan state prison for his decades-long sex crimes.)

Phelps, who had two post-Games DUIs and says he came perilously close "to losing it all," has made mental health advocacy his new life's mission. His foundation supports numerous mental health initiatives and he speaks often about the need to prioritize mental health -- especially if you're struggling -- and ask for help.

His message -- both to fellow Olympians and the rest of us -- is simple but powerful: "It's okay not to be okay."

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