"I felt like I was going crazy," Ruusuvuori discusses mental health

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Adrien Guyot

le 21/05/2025 à 11h05

3 min to read

Ruusuvuori

Emil Ruusuvuori has fallen to 247th in the world. The Finnish player, formerly ranked 37th at ATP, spent the beginning of his 2025 on the Challenger Circuit, trying to regain a taste for life and tennis.

For the 26-year-old player, who had somewhat fallen off the radar recently, has not only experienced pleasant moments. In a very long letter he wrote, published by the official ATP site, Ruusuvuori discussed his mental health, which greatly disrupted his career. Last year, he ended his season in late July after the Washington tournament.

"Last year, for four and a half months, I didn't touch a racket, but not for the reason you might expect. It was because of my mental health. I started to forget certain things.

My body was in one place, but my mind was elsewhere. This ranged from something as simple as forgetting my rackets to having panic attacks. I knew it was going too far at Roland-Garros because what was happening in my head during tournaments was starting to affect my life off the court.

I couldn't sleep well, to the point of having nightmares. I would wake up in a sweat, my heart racing, unable to breathe. I felt like I was going crazy. I would wake up in the morning to train, but I wasn't really there. It had become a matter of routine.

By the time of my first-round match in Paris, I felt like I wasn't really on the court. I tried to take one or two weeks off to see if it could help before heading to Surbiton for a Challenger grass court tournament.

Instead, I had a panic attack on the court. I would tell you what I felt, but I don't really remember the match. As you can imagine, these things were frightening. I started having panic attacks off the court, including when I was driving," Ruusuvuori initially shared.

"During Wimbledon, I had to pull over, stop, and get out of the car because sometimes I felt like I was going to faint. I had no control.

I managed to reach the third round of the tournament, but halfway through my match against Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, I mentally checked out. I just remember wanting to run off the court.

The first time I talked about my mental health with a professional was about ten years ago, but my struggles became more of a problem more recently. Three years ago, in Miami, I had my first real panic attack.

The line is so fine between normal nervousness and something more severe. It's normal to be nervous for a match, and you might start sweating, for example. But this was something different.

During the summer, I started seeing my psychologist once a week and talked about my problems with my family and very close friends, which helped me. One of my best friends had been through something similar, which made me realize I wasn't alone in this situation.

It's largely for this reason that I decided to tell my story earlier this month in a video in Finnish. It's very interesting for me to have this conversation with different people, to try to raise awareness about the need to get rid of this idea that it's somehow shameful to talk about mental health.

Everyone experiences these moments. What matters is how we handle them. When the video was published, it felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders because I felt like I was always pretending in front of people. It was so difficult. I couldn't do it anymore. I didn't feel capable of being honest, and it weighed on me.

I received a lot of very positive messages. Everyone has their own difficulties to overcome. Some people told me it was brave of me to do so and that it had helped them, which touched me a lot.

If my story helps even one person, it will be worth it. My main hope is that people know they need to take care of their mind and themselves.

That's the key. If you're not well, there's nothing more important than helping yourself. Don't keep everything inside. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to have a bad day.

But never forget one thing: tough times don't last forever," he notably developed in recent hours. Find the full letter from Ruusuvuori on the official ATP site.