In the 2021 Summer Olympics, all eyes were on Simone Biles as she led the U.S. gymnastics team on its quest for the gold.
Widely known as the nation’s best gymnast, she was expected to outperform her previous award-winning routines in Tokyo. But after her mind stalled during a major vault, she dropped out of the team finals, citing the need to preserve her mental health.
It was a moment that stunned America because few athletes had ever pulled out of a major competition for mental health reasons — the norm had always been mental toughness.
Sports have long served as a metaphor for life and athletes as the avatars for the virtues of competition — sportsmanship, teamwork, grit. But the concept of mental toughness — bearing down on one’s performance in the face of adversity — has been eclipsed by a focus on mental health.
“We try not to use ‘mental toughness’ anymore because it often implies not feeling things and just pushing aside emotions to perform,” said Trent Petrie, a psychology professor and director of the Center for Sports Psychology and Athlete Mental Health at the University of North Texas. “Mental health is about engaging with others successfully, having high emotional self-awareness and being able to rely on and connect with people.”
Mr. Petrie, who played Division I volleyball at Ohio State, said his center has provided psychotherapy to tens of thousands of athletes from high schools and universities to the WNBA’s Dallas Wings over the past 20 years.
He noted in an interview that society’s “shifting norms” have increased the emotional fragility of younger athletes who spend more hours using social media, get less sleep and obsess over setbacks with greater intensity than earlier generations.
Other psychologists, therapists and developmental health experts interviewed by The Washington Times agreed, adding that the trend goes well beyond sports.
Not toughing it out
Before the digital revolution, the idea of mental toughness fired the imagination of generations of athletes who embraced performance slogans such as “dialed in,” “man up” and “walk it off.”
New York Knicks center Willis Reed hobbled onto the court to win the 1970 NBA Finals on a torn leg muscle. Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. set a record by playing in 2,632 consecutive MLB games despite having back problems.
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life,” said Muhammad Ali, who absorbed as much punishment as he dished out in his prizefights.
But Ms. Biles stands at the forefront of a new generation of athletes who disavow the admonition to “suck it up.”
“I say, put mental health first,” the gymnast said when she temporarily withdrew from competition. “Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to enjoy your sport and you’re not going to succeed as much as you want to.”
Other champions who have taken mental health breaks in recent years include Olympic gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps and golfer Matthew Wolff.
“My depression and my anxiety is never going to just disappear,” Mr. Phelps told Healthline in a May 2022 interview about his struggles with suicidal thoughts and 2016 retirement. “I’m never going to be able to snap my fingers and say ‘Go away. Leave me alone.’ It makes me. It is a part of me. It’s always going to be a part of me.”
In July 2021, Mr. Wolff stepped away from competition for two months. He said he struggled to get out of bed and feared he would “screw up in front of everyone,” after winning the Jack Nicklaus award as the nation’s top college golfer in 2019.
“Mental health is a really big problem,” Mr. Wolff said after returning. “Any professional athlete has to deal with a lot more stress and pressure than most people and it just kind of got to me.”
Psychologists say there’s a generational difference between older adults who learned emotional resilience through personal conflicts and younger adults weaned on video games and social media.
Vince Callahan, a family psychologist and founder of the Florida Institute of Neural Discovery, noted that young people have earned “participation trophies” since the early 1990s.
“When we say it’s OK to score points without any desire to win, we turn our culture into an unmotivated society of couch potatoes without the ability to withstand challenges or the motivation to do anything,” Mr. Callahan said.
Developmental health experts say “mental health” works best as an ideal for parenting, coaching and training young people who are more emotionally fragile than their parents and grandparents were at their age.
At the same time, they warn that so-called helicopter parents and unmotivated children can use mental health buzzwords as an excuse to avoid anything unpleasant, thereby unintentionally crippling themselves emotionally.
“Using psychological language and watching online meditation videos doesn’t mean we’re mentally healthy,” said Marcie Beigel, a former special education teacher who serves as a mental health consultant to New York City’s public schools. “Kids today learn they can avoid anything they don’t enjoy, like brushing their teeth, by talking about their feelings.”
“We want the quick fix because we’re not conditioned to do the hard work,” she added.
Challenges of modern living
Today’s experts tout a focus on mental health as a cure for the depression, anxiety and suicide risks that have soared among young people emerging from the isolation of COVID-19 restrictions.
According to multiple reports, digital screen time among young people shot up during pandemic lockdowns of schools and public social outlets and has remained elevated since.
On Oct. 13, Gallup reported that U.S. teenagers spend an average of 4.8 hours on social media daily, with older teens and girls leading the way. The most popular apps are TikTok and YouTube.
Some families could be throwing away mental toughness too easily as more young people than ever isolate themselves digitally, therapists say.
Ray Guarendi, an Ohio-based family psychologist and parenting author, said the trend of parents letting social media raise their children has taken away “the challenge of living” that helped older generations overcome obstacles.
“There are still tons of mentally tough people who quietly make their marriages work and raise children with standards,” Mr. Guarendi said. “But our social media heroes are more self-indulgent, radically autonomous individuals who reject the morality and institutions that once guided our culture.”
• Tomorrow: Is mental toughness still valuable?
