Olympian Allison Schmitt Speaks Out About Depression

Everyone wanted to be Allison Schmitt. Everyone but Allison Schmitt, that is.

The now-26-year-old standout swimmer returned from the London Olympics in 2012 with five medals – three of them gold – and an adoring fan base who couldn't help but cheer for the talented, down-to-earth Midwesterner nicknamed "Schmitty."

"I had all of these people telling me how happy I should feel; what I should be feeling and that they wish they could be me," Schmitt said on Wednesday in a phone interview with U.S. News. "They saw the materialistic things; they saw the medals, but I wasn't feeling that."

But what could have begun as an understandable case of post-Olympics letdown didn't pass. Two and a half years later, Schmitt's bad days still outweighed the good – a feeling she now understands as depression. "I wasn't getting better and things were getting to the point [where] I kept internalizing it and I'd had dark thoughts and thoughts of suicide," she says, "and it scared me."

So Schmitt spoke out then, first getting help from a therapist and support from her coach and Michael Phelps, her teammate and friend, and soon opening up to her family and fans after her cousin died by suicide in May of 2015.

"[Depression] is paralyzing in that you're not living life to the fullest; you have a block that you cannot see the positive side no matter how many people tell you to be positive, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many books you read," says Schmitt, who added a gold and silver medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio. "The only hope from there is seeking help."

Now she and Phelps, who has also talked publicly about his experiences with mental health problems, are speaking out again as honorary chairpersons of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day in the District of Columbia. The event, themed "Partnering for Help and Hope," will promote the integration of behavioral health and primary care for children, youth and young adults with mental and chronic illness.

Schmitt's hope? To destigmatize depression and other mental illnesses, and to encourage young people who are struggling silently to get help. "My goal [is for mental illness] to not be the elephant in the room; to have it be a normal conversation," she says. "Accept that it's OK to not feel OK."