Eight athletes opened up about their mental illnesses in a story by USA Today.

Michael Phelps (swimming), Imani Boyette (basketball), Mardy Fish (tennis), Rick Ankiel (baseball), Royce White (basketball), Allison Schmitt (swimming), Brandon Marshall (football), Jerry West (basketball) share their respective stories of battling depression and bipolar disorder. The story is written by Scott Gleeson and Erik Brady. Below is an excerpt of Rick Ankiel’s story.

Rick Ankiel

HARDLY ‘IMMUNE TO INNER PAIN AND TORTURE’

Rick Ankiel was on the mound for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Atlanta Braves in Game 1 of the 2000 National League Division Series when he found he couldn’t do what had always come so naturally. Ankiel, the pitcher, couldn’t pitch anymore.

He threw five wild pitches in an inning; no major leaguer had done that since 1890. More starts produced more wild pitches. He was never the same.

“There’s such a stigma, especially with men, that you can’t falter, and that you shouldn’t get help.”

Baseball people said he had the yips — jitters that make it nearly impossible for an athlete to throw a strike or sink a putt — though in his case severe anxiety was at the root of it.

“For anyone who hasn’t had it happen to them, they don’t understand how deep and how dark it is,” he says. “It consumes you. It’s not just on the field. It never goes away. … It’s this ongoing battle with your own brain. You know what you want to do — in your heart. But your body and brain won’t let you do it.”

Ankiel would eventually have to give up his pitching career. Remarkably, he would come back years later as an outfielder. He is one of two players in major league history who have started a postseason game as a pitcher and hit a home run in the postseason as a position player. (The other? Some fellow by the name of Babe Ruth.)

Anxiety on the mound led to obsessive thoughts in his daily routine. TV analysts called him weak. They said he lacked mental toughness.

“I can’t imagine how bad it’d be with social media nowadays,” he says. “There’s such a stigma, especially with men, that you can’t falter, and that you shouldn’t get help.”

Ankiel found himself envious of players who had physical injuries that rehab could fix. He turned to therapy, breathing exercises and different medications — mostly to no avail.

“Nobody really had any answer,” he says. “There’s no remedy or cure.”

Ankiel was USA TODAY Sports’ high school baseball player of the year in 1997. Some touted him as the second coming of Sandy Koufax. And then, poof, it was gone.

“It was beyond frightening and scary,” he says. “We’re getting paid millions, but that doesn’t mean we’re immune to inner pain and torture.”

Ankiel wrote about all of this in The Phenomenon: Pressure, the Yips and the Pitch that Changed My Life, which came out this year. It tells of how he tried vodka and marijuana to calm himself. Nothing worked. Enter Harvey Dorfman, the late sports psychologist, who became a father figure in Ankiel’s darkest hours and helped “save my life” as his pitching career unraveled. Dorfman, who wrote The Mental Game of Baseball, helped Ankiel face his abusive childhood.

“For athletes, you want to try to turn over every stone possible to be at the best of your ability,” Ankiel says. “So if there’s a doctor or counselor who can help you, why not turn over that stone? Having a culture conducive to mental health is big. I think we’re getting there. Just about every (MLB) team has a psychology department. I’m glad we’re starting to understand. We’re all human, and I think the more we talk about mental health, the better.”

Read the rest of the story on USAToday.com.

ESPNW dives into the story of former Penn State football kicker Joey Julius and his struggle with depression, disordered eating and suicide ideation, as well as how Julius has sought help to get better. Below is an excerpt.

By Emily Caron

On Monday, March 27, 2017, the day after his 22nd birthday, Penn State kicker Joey Julius walked into the Louis and Mildred Lasch Football Building, just minutes from the famed Beaver Stadium, where he had gained national notoriety for his bone-crunching hit on a Kent State kick returner in 2016. He had an 8:00 a.m. monitored workout scheduled in the training room.

Medically monitored workouts weren’t abnormal for Julius, who had openly struggled with binge eating since October 2016. In May of that year, a then-21-year-old Julius said a temporary goodbye to his home in State College, Pennsylvania, to seek solace in St. Louis — home of McCallum Place, an eating-disorder treatment center with male- and athlete-specific programs. He stayed for two months.

“If you let me go home, I’m going to kill myself.”

At the facility, Julius was told he had an eating disorder, a diagnosis he had never before received. The 5-foot-10, 258-pound kicker had dealt with erratic eating for most of his life, but after gaining 50 pounds within months of graduating high school — where he was a four-time football letterman and soccer star — in the spring of 2014, his erratic eating rapidly escalated and became an increasingly consuming disease. He left McCallum in 2016 finally understanding what was going on with his health.

But after his workout that March morning — an abnormal weather day, he remembers, warm for a town known for its snowy winters and bone-chilling cold — he was about to leave when instead he stepped on the scale. He weighed nearly 300 pounds, the heaviest he’d ever been. He then walked into the office of Tim Bream, the head football athletic trainer.

“If you let me go home, I’m going to kill myself,” Julius says he told Bream.

Julius came back from his time at McCallum for the 2016 Penn State football season seemingly better than ever. He started speaking openly about his struggles with binge eating, restricting and purging, and returned with a vengeance on the field, continuing his tear as one of the hardest hitters in football.

But with each big hit on unsuspecting opposing kick returners, the media and the public reinforced what often fueled part of Julius’ self-consciousness about his body: Kickers just aren’t supposed to weigh in at 260 pounds.

“Body image is my biggest struggle,” Julius says. “I think it’s one of the hardest things we deal with as human beings. I was a kicker on a football team, and you’d always hear, ‘He doesn’t have the typical kicker’s body.’ But I really did not have the typical kicker’s body. I was not built like a kicker. I literally looked nothing like I was ‘supposed’ to be.”

While Happy Valley supported his success on the field and heralded his hits, they unknowingly and unintentionally contributed to the narrative that had defined Julius’ entire athletic career. He didn’t look like an athlete. His self-consciousness and self-loathing amplified by the day.

Throughout the fall of 2016, Julius remained under the watchful eye of the Penn State football staff and medical personnel. He says they all wanted what was best for him; his teammates, trainers, coaches, the fans — all of Nittany Nation had his back. They were a family in that sense, close-knit enough that Julius could fall back on their support when needed.

By March 2017, he needed it. Binge eating was only part of the problem for Julius, who had also long struggled with depression. The depression led to unhealthy eating, which led to a lack of sleep and placed an extra toll on his organs. As his physical health declined, so too did his mental state, and vice versa. It’s a toxic cycle and the reason eating disorders are so dangerous. This spring, his sickness had taken hold again.

Read the rest of the story on ESPNW.