Leading up to the Olympic games athletes get a great deal of support and attention. Clearly, during the Games the accolades and adoration spikes. After the big event athletes become ostensibly invisible. That's life - true. But this post Olympic invisibility is more intense and tough on the psyche than you may realize.

This is not much different from the psychological after effects in the days and months after you've planned your wedding or any event that took all of your attention. With post Olympic depression, for medalists and participants alike, the let down can be fierce. Established National Olympic Committees play a key role in helping Olympians with the transition but maybe you can help more than any NOC.

Post Olympic competitors, to a large degree, retire after the games. Another four years running around in circles, chasing a ball or trying to get to a white line faster than the other guy becomes somewhat pointless. The love of the sport is not what it was and the sense of loss is profound. Until the Olympics the first thing on your mind as you got out of bed was swifter, higher, stronger. Post Olympics the feeling if similar to being cut from a space ship. The tether is severed and you feel lost while floating aimlessly into deep space.

Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning and his theories on logotherapy point to a "sense of purpose" being the reason survivors of concentration camps were able to stay alive. He noted, the people who died gave up. They were lost and had no purpose. It's unnerving to admit but there will be Olympians after London who feel the same thing. Their sense of purpose will be gone and there will be some degree of depression. For some, the depression is only a nuisance. Some of it will be life threatening.

In our financial times it is all the more troublesome that retired athletes from the Olympics will face challenges in finding work. If you run a small business and you know an Olympian, reach out to them. Only a select few will be a motivational keynote speaker. Fewer still will get the endorsements necessary to keep them hopping. Grow your business with an Olympian at the helm of a project. Involve them in an initiative you've needed help on. If you work with a large corporation, reach out to an Olympian you know, or know of.

Feeling needed… Exercising your character strengths… Channeling your energies to a new project… these experiences can help an Olympian through an intensely difficult time. At the same moment, you may find yourself working alongside a person who's DNA is about extraordinary achievement and world-class excellence.

The Olympics are over but those people (formerly known as athletes) are not. If you know of an Olympian – reach out. If you don’t contact your National Olympic Committee. Let’s keep cheering for them after the flame burns out.