Getting Honest, Staying Open, with Olympian Allison...

Getting Honest, Staying Open, with Olympian Allison Schmitt

Learn more about how our community is sharing their mental health journeys and supporting one another.

“Life is a tough game, and we can’t get through it alone,” says Olympic swimmer Allison Schmitt (@arschmitty). After her 17-year-old cousin died by suicide in May 2015, Allison, now 26, decided to raise awareness and open up about her own struggles with depression.

“We’re taught from a young age to persevere, and if we keep persevering, we’ll be stronger on the other side. That works in a classroom. It works on the field. It worked in the pool for me. But it’s much bigger than that.

I first started getting help in January of 2015. I was at a swim meet two weeks after I had, I guess, dark feelings for the first time. At that swim meet, my teammate and friend Michael Phelps (@m_phelps00), who’s like a brother to me, noticed that I was not the same old bubbly Schmitty I had always been. He said, ‘I see you’re going through something. You’re not your same self. If you want to talk, I’m #hereforyou — or I can get someone else to talk to you.’ For some reason, at that moment, coming from him, it really resonated with me. I broke down on the pool deck in front of everyone I know, and I admitted that I do need help.

I want people to know it’s OK not to be OK. But it’s not OK to isolate. So please, ask for help. It’s OK to ask for help.”

by via Instagram Blog