For World Mental Health Day, here are their stories.

Helen Richardson-Walsh

There was a time when Helen Richardson-Walsh could count the hours she’d been crying in the midst of her mental health battles.

The four-time hockey Olympian fought depression in 2009, struggling with isolation playing for a top club in the Netherlands, and again in 2013 when injury threatened to end her career.

Richardson-Walsh moved to HC Den Bosch after the 2008 Olympics but struggled with the switch to full-time training, a language barrier and isolation from all that was familiar.

“I just didn’t have a huge amount going on in my life,” said the 39-year-old, speaking to Callum Skinner on Team GB’s In Conversation With… series.

“I was on the pitch five or six times a week and not doing the strength programme we were meant to follow alongside it. I’d go to bed late, get up late and cry all the time.

“I’d cry for an hour, two hours, but then I’d be fine for a couple of days and think I didn’t need to talk to anyone. I didn’t feel like I belonged and my lifestyle was so different over there.

“It improved me as a hockey player but it stopped me enjoying it.”

The star midfielder helped Britain win bronze on home soil at London 2012 but a second serious back injury on the back of the Games left her career hanging in the balance.

Richardson-Walsh broke down after putting herself through a gruelling eight-week programme to try to prove her fitness and gain selection for the 2014 World Cup.

“It was back to the uncontrolled crying and at that point, it was impossible for me to hide I was that low,” she said.

“I couldn’t even crack a smile when I saw people. Everything shut down physically and mentally and I thought my career was over.”

She went to the Priory for counselling and started practicing mindfulness, which began the road back and two years later she was part of the team that won gold at Rio 2016.

“To talk to someone totally removed from my world with a different perspective was so important, and it really helped,” said Richardson-Walsh.

“I never wanted to be that person who had depression - there are still times when I don’t admit it now - but when I remember being curled up on the floor unable to move, there was something wrong.”

Alex Davis

In November 2015, Rio rugby sevens Olympian Alex Davis put the phone down in Dubai having been told his father had a week to live.

Davis, then 23, found out his Dad’s leukaemia had become terminal and spoke to Skinner about his struggles with sharing the news and his emotions with team-mates.

“It was scary for me to think that other people would ask me questions and tell me about their vulnerabilities because I worried that I would break down myself,” said Davis.

“I took comfort in the dressing room banter but it didn’t help me. I wasn’t acknowledging the difficult and confusing emotions I was having.”

Davis stayed on the treadmill towards the 2016 Olympics and suffered his first major rugby injury two months later on the Sydney stage of the World Sevens Tour.

“It wasn’t visible to anyone but things were building up - rehab, Olympics, the death of my father - and I was just suffering,” said Davis.

“The stigma of being a bloke and not talking about my feelings was suffocating me. My coping mechanism was to bury myself back into rugby and sport.”

He won selection for the Olympics but pulled out with an injury two days before the competition and watched on from a hospital bed in Bristol as his team-mates won silver.

Davis opened up to his family and to performance psychologist Katie Warriner about a traumatic time, a painful process that totally transformed him.

“Although it was painful, I benefited from talking about it so much and the trust I placed in those people built up my courage,” he said.

“It was step-by-step and as I spoke more, I felt relief and a weight off the shoulders. I didn’t want someone to see me crying - but it was the best thing I ever did.”

Samantha Murray

Modern pentathlete Samantha Murray embraced the potential of sports psychology in 2010 and never looked back, giving her a different outlook on her discipline and life in general.

Murray started regularly seeing a sports psychologist in 2010 to address difficulties with her mentality towards shooting, a fifth of her sport that she struggled with for long periods.

“At the time, we didn’t call it mindfulness, just breathing really deeply in a certain way!” the 31-year-old told Skinner.

“I realised I was breathing really well when I was swimming and running but when I was shooting, I was breathing through my chest, I was flapping and I failed.

“I was in a spiral of negativity that I couldn’t get out of it. Thankfully, I sought help and it was amazing.”

Murray went on to win silver at London 2012 in the final medal event of the Games - a shock success with her having graduated from University of Bath just weeks before.

Rio 2016 was a different story and with the pressure of going in as an Olympic medallist, felt she over-trained and struggled for perspective.

“I hadn’t managed myself and my life well in the lead-up to Rio, everything felt like a sacrifice and that struggle was bound to expose itself,” she said.

“I lost my support network and my self-worth. Deep down, I didn’t think I could beat the girls in Rio and it was just a difference in mindset, physically there was no difference.”

Murray finished seventh four years ago, which she found a crushing disappointment, but it would help her come to terms with life after sport.

“I realised I needed to change and while finishing seventh made me really sad, sitting here now I’m pretty grateful for it,” she said.

“It kicked me and made changes I needed to make for myself. I needed to find new ways to satisfy my adjusted set of values and beliefs and desires for what I wanted in the future.”