Washington: Star gymnast Simone Biles sent shock waves across the United States by withdrawing from a number of event finals at the Tokyo Olympics, citing her mental health.

Biles’s decision has placed the world’s most decorated gymnast at the forefront of a growing number of young black female athletes who are prioritising their mental health and personal agency above societal and cultural expectations, historical scholars and mental health experts told The Washington Post.

Jordan Chiles and Simone Biles of Team United States react during the women’s team final in Japan on Wednesday.Credit:Getty Images

Biles, tennis star Naomi Osaka and others are etching their name in sports history while carrying on the legacy of black women at the forefront of social change, experts say.

Biles and her peers are disrupting the narrative of self sacrifice at all costs learnt by women, athletes and people of colour, said Inger Burnett-Zeigler, the author of Nobody Knows the Troubles I’ve Seen: The Emotional Lives of Black Women.

“The experience of black women being in pain that’s unacknowledged is a common one,” said Burnett-Zeigler, a clinical psychologist in the psychiatry and behavioural sciences department at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “The pain is there despite still performing with excellence. The fact that they can name it and attend to it is liberating people from carrying it in secret.”

At a news conference this week, Biles cited as an inspiration Osaka, who drew praise and derision for her choice to sit out the French Open following her refusal to attend news conferences with reporters. The 23-year-old tennis star said she wanted to safeguard her mental health after long bouts of depression since the 2018 US Open and anxiety leading up to this year’s French tournament.

Simone Manuel, an Olympic gold medallist in the 50 and 100-meter freestyle, shared last month that she was suffering from overtraining syndrome and depression.

The 24-year-old, who at the 2016 Rio Games became the first black American woman to win an individual swimming gold medal, said the stress of training and its accompanying depression caused irritability, appetite disruptions and fatigue.

She also cited the postponement of the games and the recorded brutalisation of black people in America as contributors to her drained mental and emotional reserves.

Simone Manuel, of the United States, leaves the pool after a women’s 50m freestyle semifinal at the Tokyo Olympics on Saturday.Credit:AP

“It’s not something I can ignore, and it was just another factor that can influence you, mentally, in a draining way,” she said in a tearful news conference last month after failing to qualify for the 100-meter freestyle finals at the US Olympic swimming trials.

The young women are far from being the first to talk about their struggles, but their intersecting identities as athletes, black people and as women could have a snowball effect across communities that often find it difficult or shameful to speak openly about mental wellness, said Caroline Brackette, an associate professor and assistant dean for accreditation and assessment in the College of Health Professions at Mercer University.

Athletic associations such as the NCAA, NFL and NBA are trending towards having staff equipped to handle mental health concerns and provide coping strategies, but that’s been a more recent development, said Brackette, who also consults athletic teams on mental health strategies.

In a social media post, Biles stated that she felt like she had “the weight of the world” on her shoulders.

Australian gold medallists Bronte Campbell, Meg Harris, Emma Mckeon and Cate Campbell and American bronze medallists Erika Brown, Abbey Weitzeil, Natalie Hinds and Simone Manuel on the podium after the women’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay final on day two of the Tokyo Olympics.Credit:Getty

Shaking it off hasn’t always bode well for athletes. Data has shown that 35 per cent of elite athletes suffer from a mental health crisis, which could result in stress, disordered eating and other symptoms. But few of today’s top athletic stars seek help, the International Olympic Committee reported.

Though the novel coronavirus has also made some space for talking about mental health, some of the communities that Biles, Osaka and Manuel represent have been battling for mental wellness without always obtaining necessary treatment, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

Among their black peers age 18 to 25 in the US, major depressive episodes have increased from 6.1 per cent to 9.4 per cent between 2015 and 2018, according to Mental Health America. Yet, the percentage of black adults over 18 who receive treatment for these episodes lags behind their white peers, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health.

Took time out: Naomi Osaka.Credit:Getty Images

Black women and white women over 18 reported a higher percentage of feeling extreme psychological distress compared to men of their race in 2018, the agency reported.

The crop of black women athletes today is also upholding a tradition of black women being thankless foot soldiers for change, scholars said.

Black church women frequently played silent or invisible roles throughout the fight for civil rights, which was largely viewed as being led exclusively by black men, and women of the WNBA had been long been advocating for racial justice before NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick became the focal topic of athletes and activism, said Shaonta’ Allen, a Mellon Faculty Fellow, in the sociology department at Dartmouth College.

What’s newly radical about the stance young black female athletes have taken on mental wellness is that it unravels historical, political and societal constraints that continually view black women as tools for others but not their own will, said Andrea Boyles, associate professor of sociology and Africana studies at Tulane University.

Black women have long been seen as commodities, whether for their physical and sexual abilities for birthing more enslaved children to bolstering political parties without being expected to lead them, Boyles said. Young black women having autonomy can make people uncomfortable.

“It’s refreshing to see that good, bad or indifferent, for these black women to be able to explore and breathe and take time to tend to their own existences,” she said. “Whether they meant for that to be the case or not; they are taking time for themselves.”

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