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Michael Phelps has described depression following each Olympic Games, and has said the period after the 2012 Games was the worst of it. [cnn-2018-phelps] The detail that carries most beyond his own case is how he framed the cause: not as mood, but as identity.
The account he actually gives
He has described the central problem as not feeling like a person. In his own framing, for most of his life he did not feel like a human being, and things only began to make sense once he could look at himself and see a person rather than a swimmer.
That is a different explanation from the one usually attached to athletes, which is anticlimax or the loss of competition. It locates the problem in what the years of training had done to the shape of a self rather than in the absence of the next race, and it explains why winning more did not fix it.
Why finishing something can precede a collapse
The pattern is structurally sensible once you look at what a long-held goal actually provides. It supplies the daily routine, the reason to get up, the criteria for whether a week went well, the social world, and the answer to what you are. Reaching it removes all of those at once, and it removes them precisely because you succeeded.
This is why the achievement is not protective. People expect relief and get a vacancy, and the mismatch between the expected feeling and the actual one adds a layer of confusion and often shame on top of the low mood itself.
It generalises well past sport. The same shape appears after finishing a doctorate, after a career ends, after a long project ships, after the last child leaves, and after any role that has been the organising fact of a life for years.
After something ended
For anyone in the months after finishing something that organised their life.
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This is the shape of a depressive episode occurring in a predictable context, and the context does not make it less treatable. The last item is worth noticing: feeling you have no right to it is one of the main reasons people delay.
Several of these together, particularly the loss of structure and of the people attached to it, are the conditions under which a dip becomes something that persists. Rebuilding routine and contact deliberately is the practical lever here.
Some flatness after a major ending is ordinary and usually passes as a new routine forms. Worth revisiting if it has not shifted in a couple of months.
Take the depression self-assessment
A reflection prompt. The linked screener is a validated questionnaire and is still not a diagnosis.
Depression without a misfortune to point at
The most useful thing in this account, for a reader who is not an Olympian, is that the years in question were successful by every external measure. There is no adversity in the story to explain the depression, and that absence is exactly what makes it instructive.
A great many people delay seeking help because they cannot name a reason. The reasoning runs that depression is a response to something bad, nothing bad has happened, therefore this must be a character problem rather than an illness. Depression does not require a triggering misfortune, and a documented case where nothing went wrong is a more effective counter to that belief than the general statement is.
The part that is specifically about men
Men seek help for depression at consistently lower rates, and present differently when they do, more often reporting irritability, physical symptoms or drinking than sadness. Relapse and recurrence in depression are also common enough that getting into treatment early matters rather than waiting to see whether it lifts. [buckman-2018-relapse]
A public account from someone whose toughness is not in question does one narrow thing well here, and it is worth being precise about the limit. It does not provide evidence about treatment and it is not a case study. What it does is remove one specific excuse, which for this group is frequently the binding constraint rather than availability of care.
When to seek help
Speak to a doctor if low mood, loss of interest or disturbed sleep have lasted more than two weeks, and particularly if you cannot point to a reason, since that absence causes people to wait rather than to seek help. If the low period followed the end of something that organised your life, say so, because it shapes what treatment addresses. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, treat that as urgent and contact your local emergency services or a crisis helpline.
How MyFreud can help
Tracking mood daily through the months after a major ending shows whether it is lifting or settling, which is the distinction that decides whether this is an adjustment or something that needs treatment, and it is very hard to judge from inside. Our depression guide covers the condition in depth, including men’s mental health.
Download MyFreud and start today: App Store or Google Play.