Paris: Located on the first floor of the fitness centre inside the Athletes Village rests a first-of-its-kind room. Somewhat symbolically, it blends with the area where elite athletes work tirelessly on the physicality that their sport demands. At the Paris Olympics, there’s a separate space for the mind too.
Set up for the first time at the Games is a dedicated mental health zone, known as the Athlete365 Mind Zone. It is staffed by trained officials to deal with athletes who may come in with concerns, but it’s also an all-inclusive and all-encompassing area for the mind for those simply looking for an escape from the unrelenting mental pursuit that an Olympics demands.
A room with low lighting and noise cancellation systems, it has areas for VR guided meditation, sleeping pods, yoga, and an art spot to paint and write down thoughts.
“I’m willing to experience it. It’s a very positive change,” India’s ace shooter Anjum Moudgil said.
It’s another step by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had set up a 24/7 helpline with mental health counsellors with over 70 languages at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, to balance the bridge between perceptions towards mental and physical health by athletes. Paris 2024 has the zone to go with the helpline. Tokyo 2021 had none.
That elite athletes, even the unmatched Michael Phelps kind, aren’t immune to mental health issues really came to the fore around the pandemic Games. If Naomi Osaka’s French Open withdrawal a little over a month before the Olympics was dramatic, gymnast Simone Biles pulling out of multiple events in Tokyo owing to ‘twisties’ was even more stunning. Tokyo’s five-time gold medallist Caeleb Dressel took an eight-month break from swimming in the aftermath of the Games to address his mental health.
Simmering murmurs around a subject that was often hushed made way for sustained conversations over the last couple of years. Even in India to an extent. Shuttler Lakshya Sen, in April last year, announced that he would take a short break from the sport to “take care of his mental and physical health”. Anjum, who dealt with imposter syndrome in 2022 and a belief-crushing loss of form in 2023, also shared her experiences about battling mental health issues during the phase.
“I’ve always shared all the real experiences that I’ve had with my mental health. I like to speak about and share whatever I felt, so that if it could help even one athlete in any way, I would be grateful. There are a lot of athletes now who have started to talk about mental health,” Anjum said.
An IOC Athlete365 survey revealed “that mental health was one of the top priorities for athletes”, Kirsty Burrows, IOC’s Head of the Safe Sport Unit that ideated and executed the concept of this zone, told this paper.
The messaging from the body’s mental health working group — it includes India’s Abhinav Bindra — from talking to athletes was that “care for physical and mental health must be taken as equally important”, she added. Stationed by the gym in the Village of the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, thus, the idea of having a mental health zone was born and took shape in Paris.
“The entire space is designed around decompression and disconnection,” Burrows said. “There are areas for art and yoga activities. There’s also sleep pods and areas where you can do VR guided meditation. We’ve developed bespoke VR guided programs—there’s one on breathing techniques and one on mindfulness.”
Also in the zone are officials from the IOC Safe Sport Unit. Athletes can reach out and talk to them at any point during the Games “to have delicate or sensitive conversations” for those “who might be in the need of further support”, said Burrows.
This is over and above the mental wellness experts that most nations have brought as part of their contingent to Paris. Beijing 2022 was the first instance of IOC handing out official accreditations to such officials. At Paris 2024, over 170 mental welfare officials from over 90 countries have been accredited (India has two as part of the IOA medical team).
With these steps, hopes Burrows, conversations around mental health gets destigmatized, and drives athletes to further accept and open up about mental health.
“Athletes experience mental health symptoms and disorders at around the same rate as the general population — it’s about one in three,” Burrows said. “So we want to try and make sure that we promote this concept and destigmatize conversations around mental health.”
Anjum hopes to also see that in the Indian sporting ecosystem. “I would really like people to understand the importance of mental health, and how sometimes the criticism and all the negative comments and everything really affects an athlete. If people too could understand this, it would be a positive change for Indian sports.”
