‘Your Strength Is Inspirational’: How Naomi Osaka’s Twitter Announcement Destigmatizes Mental Health Disclosures

Abstract

On May 31, 2021, Naomi Osaka, one of the top-ranked female tennis players, and one of the highest-paid female athletes in the world, announced her withdrawal from the French Open on her social media (Twitter) account, citing mental health issues. There exists a stigma around mental health; and people suffering from mental health conditions often experience “discrimination and stigma” (World Health Organization, 2019). Such disclosures by a noted sportsperson provide an opportunity to help combat the stigma. The present study uses unsupervised machine learning and qualitative thematic analysis to analyze 11,800 English language responses to her tweet. Results indicate that Osaka’s tweet mostly garnered a lot of support and encouragement. However, there also existed some negative comments. Additionally, 40% of the negative comments were disseminated by bot-like automated accounts. Practical implications for sports communication are also discussed.

Public mental illness disclosure on social media and the effects on stigma toward people with mental illness: A systematic review.

“…Out of the 12 studies, nine studies were published within the last 3 years (Budenz et al, 2022; Francis, 2021; King & McCashin, 2022; Kumble et al, 2022; Lotun et al, 2022; Neubaum et al, 2020; Parrott et al, 2020; Taniguchi & Glowacki, 2024), and only one study was conducted in a non-English-speaking setting (Neubaum et al, 2020). Five studies used a data-mining method to extract online comments and responses to public mental illness disclosures on social media (Francis, 2021; King & McCashin, 2022; Kumble et al, 2022; Naslund et al, 2014; Parrott et al, 2020).…”

“…In the case of the five "vignettebased" experimental studies (Miles, 2016;Neubaum et al, 2020;Taniguchi & Glowacki, 2024), the messengers were all fictional characters representing "ordinary" people. With regard to the diagnosis of the messengers, eight studies involved disclosures from individuals with depression or anxiety-related disorders (Budenz et al, 2022;Francis, 2021;Kumble et al, 2022;Miles, 2016;Parrott et al, 2020;Taniguchi & Glowacki, 2024). Six studies involved disclosures from individuals with other mental health conditions, such as bipolar disorder, borderline/personality disorder, and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (King & McCashin, 2022;Lotun et al, 2022;Miles, 2016;Naslund et al, 2014;Neubaum et al, 2020).…”

“…Providing guidance on help-seeking was another prevalent theme (King & McCashin, 2022;Lotun et al, 2022;Miles, 2016;Naslund et al, 2014). Distinctively, those who gained popularity on social media, such as "traditional" celebrities and "emerging" influencers, often used their messages for social advocacy, aiming to raise public awareness about mental well-being (Francis, 2021;Kumble et al, 2022;Lotun et al, 2022;Parrott et al, 2020).…”

“…However, there were still instances of stigmatizing comments on social media, though relatively few, directed toward people with mental illness (e.g., "You're just a spoiled athlete," Kumble et al, 2022). To exacerbate the issue, one data-mining study (Kumble et al, 2022) even identified the presence of social media bots that disseminated and amplified stigmatizing messages online. The information extracted from the data-mining studies regarding the effects on stigma can be found in Supplemental Material Table 2.…”

“…Six studies referred to disclosures on Facebook (Francis, 2021;Miles, 2016;Neubaum et al, 2020;Taniguchi & Glowacki, 2024), where messages were predominantly text-and photo-based. Similarly, two studies involved text-based disclosures on Twitter (Kumble et al, 2022;Parrott et al, 2020), while one study included captioned photo messages on Instagram (Budenz et al, 2022). Additionally, three studies involved videobased disclosures on YouTube (King & McCashin, 2022;Lotun et al, 2022;Naslund et al, 2014).…”