The World's Mental Health Moment: Why Simone Biles Will Be TIME’s Person of the Year

How COVID-19 and Three Women Changed the Global Conversation Around Mental Health

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I grew up in a home that revered TIME magazine. My father always said his life goal was to be between the commas in TIME, as in Bruce Feiler, son of Jane and Ed Feiler of Savannah, Georgia, did XXX. (As long as that XXX wasn’t a mass murder.) The clearest sign of being a TIME family was our annual bet on who would be Man of the Year, then Person of the Year, and, occasionally, ignominiously, Persons of the Year. (I see you, 2005!)

As someone who’s bet on this choice for decades, I can say with confidence that this year’s choice seems pretty clear: Simone Biles. Or, if they really insist on persons: Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, and Meghan Markle.

Every great collective event of the last century—even the most horrific ones—has produced unexpected positive benefits to society. World War I introduced the idea of “shell shock” and opened an international conversation on the effects of wartime trauma on soldiers. World War II catalyzed significant advances in race relations, from the first planned March on Washington to early integration among soldiers. (I wrote my undergraduate thesis on this topic.) The events of 9/11 proved vital in welcoming Muslims into interfaith dialogue.

The same is already proving true for the COVID-19 pandemic. Even while we’re still battling the ongoing crisis, some positive outcomes are already beginning to surface—new creativity around remote work; increased global cooperation on public health.

But to my mind, the clear winner for encouraging outcomes of the pandemic is heightened awareness around public health. This year has been the world’s public health moment.

The statistics on how COVID-19 has worsened our collective well-being have been stark. A CDC report in June 2020 found that among adults across the United States, 31% reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, 13% reported having started or increased substance use, 26% reported stress-related symptoms, and 11% reported having serious thoughts of suicide in the past 30 days. These numbers are nearly double the rates we would have expected before the pandemic.

A study published in Nature six months later looked at eight million calls to helplines in nineteen countries and regions and found that call volumes jumped 35 percent during the first wave of coronavirus.

“The increase in calls was mainly driven by additional people ringing because they wanted someone to talk to about this pandemic,” said Marius Brülhart, an economist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and a co-author of the paper. “There was no sign of an explosion in calls due to domestic violence or suicide.”

A study published in The Lancet this fall, a year after those earlier studies, looked at 5363 unique data sources and found that areas that had higher Covid-19 infection rates and reductions in human mobility resulted in “increased prevalence of major depressive disorders.” Women were more affected than men and younger age groups than older age groups.

Lead author Damian Santomauro of the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research, School of Public Health, in Australia, said, “Our findings highlight an urgent need to strengthen mental health systems in order to address the growing burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders worldwide."

As bad as the challenges around mental health have been, one reality of contemporary media culture is that it often takes a celebrity to galvanize public attention. Think Lou Gehrig and ALS, Rock Hudson and AIDS, Michael J. Fox and Parkinson’s.

This year, three high-profile celebrities at the top of their fields—all women of color—spoke out about mental health. They became the public face of this otherwise invisible endemic.

Biles, only 24 and already the winner of seven Olympic medals before this year, including four gold, and the public face of this year’s games, disclosed her mental health struggles during the Tokyo Olympics and pulled out of the event.

As she told NBC's "Today" show in October, still she’s struggling with the "twisties," a mental block where competitors can lose track of where they are while in midair.

"I do double lay half-outs, which is my signature move on the floor. That's never affected me. But everything else weighs so heavy, and I watch the girls do it, and it's not the same," Biles said. “I'm still scared to do gymnastics.”

Biles made her move just weeks after Osaka, the No. 2-ranked player in the world, stepped away from the French Open and withdrew from Wimbledon to prioritize her mental health.

As she wrote in an essay in, ahem," TIME, "I do hope that people can relate and understand it's OK not to be OK; and it's OK to talk about it. There are people that can help, and there is usually light at the end of any tunnel."

The first high-profile figure to join this chorus was Meghan Markle, who, in her March 7 interview with Oprah, opened up about the difficulties of royal life, including the toll her new role took on her mental health.

Markle said she experienced “clear and real and frightening and constant” thoughts of suicide. “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.” She went to the palace office, she claimed, and said, “I am concerned for my mental welfare.’”

These women were not alone, of course. Markle's husband, Harry, voice his support and co-hosted a mental health series on Apple called “The Me You Can’t See.” Biles was supported by another high-profile Olympian, Michael Phelps, who’s been open about his own mental health struggles.

But 2021 has been a moment when hope and history rhyme, and Biles, along with Osaka and Markle, have been the rhymers. For that reason, one or all of them will be TIME’s Person of the Year. The burden will then be on the rest of us to push back on the haters, offer our support to those who speak out, and make anyone who struggles with their mental health feel comfortable in seeking any help they need.

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Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, or scroll through my other posts.

You might enjoy reading these posts:

What to Say to Someone Who’s Grieving

The Hardest Part of Forgiveness

The Forgotten Psychological Tool That Can Make You Happier Today

Or these books: Life Is in the Transitions, The Secrets of Happy Families, and Council of Dads.

Or, you can contact me directly.