mikaela shiffrin is 26. she works very hard and is an immensely talented skier with 47 world cup victories and an olympic gold medal. this week, when she made a mistake doing something most of us could never even come close to, her humiliation was broadcast on tv. cameras lingered on shiffrin’s hunched figure long after she fell during
the slalom course
, disqualifying her from her two best events. nbc broadcasted her emotional response
for nearly 20 minutes
. she fought back tears in an interview, where
she told reporters
, “i won’t ever get over this.”
it can be easy to forget, watching the olympics, that athletes with enormous talent are also just people — and that they’re under an enormous amount of pressure.
“stress-related illnesses are extremely common in professional sports, and they are becoming more so as the pressures on athletes increase,” dr. barry cripps, chairman of the sports and exercise division of the british psychological society,
told the independent
. “the expectations are enormous and sometimes people cannot handle it.”
in 2018, the international olympic committee published a report that found elite athletes experience depression at roughly the same rate as the general population — but the difference is that these athletes are less likely to recognize or acknowledge their depressive symptoms. depression also seems more common in individual athletes than people who play team sports.
both depression and anxiety are more common in people with maladaptive perfectionism — people who are highly self-conscious and who tend to have very negative reactions when things don’t go as planned. that kind of mindset can be hard to avoid in sports, although, of course, it isn’t a productive one: while some elite sports “require athletes to achieve perfect performance outcomes, the tendency to be characterized by perfectionistic personality traits and to be cognitively preoccupied with the attainment of perfection often undermines performance and fosters a sense of dissatisfaction with performance,”
a 2005 canadian study found
.
5 minute read
