It takes strength and courage for any of us to ask for help with our mental health — let alone someone like American gymnast Simone Biles.
The front-runner at the Tokyo Olympics withdrew from the team and individual all-around competitions this week to focus on her mental health, just days after posting on Instagram, “I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times.”
For years, Biles has been under a level of international pressure that’s unimaginable to most of us but familiar to many top athletes. She joins a wave of elite competitors who have become increasingly vocal about the toll being taken on their mental health.
Just in the last few months, the world’s No. 2-ranked tennis player, Naomi Osaka pulled out of the French Open and then Wimbledon to prioritise her mental health. Briton Emma Raducanu also cited her mental health when she withdrew from Wimbledon.
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These athletes have sparked worldwide conversations about mental health, which can impact fans by removing stigmas and showing them that their heroes are human, too.
“These athletes are declaring that mental health is health, and that we need to care for our mental health the same way we care for our physical health,” said Lea Milligan, CEO of MQ Mental Health Research. “It’s a powerful message: ‘If Simone Biles can ask for help, then maybe I can, too.’”
While these conversations are critically important, Milligan said, encouraging more people to get the support they need is only the first step. For example, the British Olympic Association sent a team of 10 mental health specialists to monitor and support British Olympians in Tokyo — but that doesn’t address the systemic reasons those athletes might need extra support in the first place.
To truly change the mental health landscape, we must invest in more scientific research today.
In the UK, mental health research receives 25 times less funding than cancer research, which means we don’t understand mental illnesses nearly as well as we understand other conditions. We don’t know enough about why a treatment might work for one person but not another, or how to diagnose some conditions quickly and accurately. As a result, too many people are forced to wait too long for relief.
This is why MQ exists. We fund research at the world’s leading institutions to develop better treatments and faster diagnoses for the mental health conditions that will affect one in four people worldwide every year. Better outcomes for all of us begin with better understanding that comes only from research.
“We just don’t know enough yet. We haven’t studied mental illnesses enough to really know how to diagnose them, how to treat them, maybe even how to prevent them,” Milligan said. “Investing in mental health research will help all of us, from Simone Biles all the way to you and me.”
