Michael Phelps Opens up About Mental Health in Quarantine, Calling It ‘Darkest Moments’ of His Life

Michael Phelps recently opened up about his mental health issues while being quarantined during the coronavirus pandemic. He took part in Yahoo Life’s Reset Your Mind event this week and got candid about times where he would break down. With him being at home, the 34-year-old former Olympic swimmer reveals being quarantined has led to some of the “darkest moments of his life.”

“I can say this has been the most difficult time for myself to go through,” Phelps said, as transcribed by Daily Mail. ‘I’ve gone through some of, probably the darkest moments, like continuous darkest moments that I’ve gone through. They’ve gone on week stretches, and it’s scary.” Phelps continued to say the challenges COVID-19 presents can lead to anyone being upset. The fact that there’s a lot of unknowns surrounding the pandemic can cause some people to die by suicide, which is very upsetting for Phelps.

“Suicide rates have to stop climbing,” Phelps continued. “It honestly, it drives me insane. I want to start crying right now just because it’s — I know how difficult it is in this time. I personally have felt that I don’t want to be alive in my life. I’ve felt that feeling before, and it’s scary.” As dark things might look for Phelps at times, he has accomplished a lot in his career and got the opportunity to look back on it. He is the most accomplished athlete in Olympic history, winning 23 gold medals and 28 medals overall. In the 2016 Olympics, Phelps won five gold medals and one silver. He won eight medals in 2004 and 2008, which is the record for most medals in a single Olympics games.

“I was very fortunate to accomplish every goal that I ever wrote down on a piece of paper, and it’s incredible. It’s a great feeling, especially looking back now and being retired,’ Phelps. But even when he was having success in the Olympics, he was struggling with mental health but didn’t tell anyone at the time. It reached a low point in 2014 when he was arrested for DUI. That was when he began talking to a therapist and was able to manage his mental health. “It was a really, really crazy time,” Phelps said on the TODAY show in 2018. “I didn’t want to see anybody because I saw myself as letting so many people down, and myself in particular, and that’s hard to carry.”