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Heather du Plessis-Allan: Naomi Osaka highlights the problem with the mental health defence

Author
Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date
Tue, 1 Jun 2021, 5:11pm

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Naomi Osaka highlights the problem with the mental health defence

Author
Heather du Plessis-Allan,
Publish Date
Tue, 1 Jun 2021, 5:11pm

The problem for Naomi Osaka is the perception that she has used mental health as an excuse to get her own way.

She has quit the French Open altogether, after complaining that press conferences reinforce her feeling that “people have no regard for athletes’ mental health”.

The truth is she doesn’t play well on clay courts. And according to her sister’s now deleted Reddit post, Osaka wanted to increase her chances of winning on clay, by cutting out negative voices.

And she knew that if she fronted for the media, they would remind her through their questions that she struggles on clay.

So, to improve her focus, the media conferences were out.

Now that is a perfectly legitimate reason I would’ve thought for not fronting. And had she explained that, she would still have had her detractors sure, but she wouldn’t now be facing accusations that she trivialised mental health or exploited that as an excuse to get out of press conferences.

Half the problem here – to be fair - is that the definition of mental health is so broad it can be used to justify just about anything.

Mental health – according to the WHO definition - doesn’t just mean the absence of mental disorders, it is “a state of well-being in which an individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community”.

So it literally just means your ability to live your best life, in which case everything do you do or don’t do can be put down to mental health.  

So, having said that, the lesson here, if there is one, is to be careful in using mental health as an excuse for getting out of things.

I’m sure you will have noticed, it has been a lot lately – especially by politicians - to avoid ongoing publicity, because they know, once you mention mental health, people back off.

Overuse though – and abuse – leads to ‘boy who cried wolf’ syndrome, where eventually it could lose its power.

And whether her reasoning was dishonest or not, Osaka hasn’t helped the situation.

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