Naomi Osaka Puts Mental Health on the World’s Biggest Stage

On May 26, 2021, four-time Grand Slam tennis champion Naomi Osaka announced she would not attend mandatory post-match press conferences at the French Open, citing the negative effect of media questioning on her mental health. Tennis’s four Grand Slam tournaments responded with a 15,000 euro fine and threatened escalating sanctions, including possible disqualification. What followed revealed the distance between how major sports institutions think about athlete wellbeing and how a new generation of athletes actually experiences it.

Osaka, who had spoken publicly about her struggles with depression since 2018, withdrew from the French Open entirely after the first round. She issued a statement saying she had been suffering from long bouts of depression since the 2018 US Open and took several months away from competition. The response from the tennis establishment was initially defensive, characterised by deflections about contractual obligations. The response from the public and fellow athletes was overwhelmingly supportive.

Osaka had, almost inadvertently, opened a conversation that the sports world had been approaching and retreating from for decades. The psychological demands placed on elite athletes — the expectation that they perform emotionally as well as physically, that they be articulate ambassadors for their sport at all times — had never been formally questioned by any governing body. The fact that a 23-year-old woman, the highest-paid female athlete in the world, was willing to absorb enormous professional and financial risk to assert that these demands were unreasonable shifted the terms of the debate permanently.

By the time Osaka returned to competition at the Cincinnati Open in August, the conversation had changed. The Women’s Tennis Association announced it was reviewing its media obligations policy. The Australian Open committed to providing quiet rooms for players before and after matches. Several Grand Slam tournaments indicated they were exploring more flexible arrangements. None of this would have happened without Osaka’s decision to act on her own truth at the most visible possible moment.