Chance The Rapper Says He’s Dealing ‘Dark Days’ From PTSD
Chance The Rapper has always been an advocate for mental health awareness, but when it comes to his own, he says he’s had to and is currently dealing with many issues.
In an interview clip from Peace of Mind with Taraji via PEOPLE, the Chicago rapper told Taraji P. Henson and Tracie Jade about mental health and the stigma particularly Black men face if they seek or need help. He’s also explaining why he’s working to break that cycle.
In the video, Henson asks Chance if mental health was a topic of discussion in his household. His reply: it wasn’t.
"Wellness wasn't something that we knew, you know?" he said. "There's probably a ton of situations where people you know, we just wrote them off as crazy, or like they was tweakin' but they were actually going through a chronic mental health disorder.”
He added: "I feel like this is something that we're all, as a mainstream, we're starting to be like, 'OK, yeah health is beyond just our physical.'"
Chance continued, opening up about his personal mental health, saying he has “a lot of dark days.”
"Obviously I deal with PTSD, I saw my friend killed in front of me when I was 19 and I've seen people I didn't know get killed too," he says. "You become kind of numb to it, like somebody else died last week but it stays with you, you know what I mean? And you don't realize until later — like I have lasting effects."
The full episode, which is titled “Why Black Men Don’t Cry with Chance the Rapper” is slated to air on November 1 at noon EST on Facebook Watch. It will also feature a 19-year-old who shares how he felt ashamed to ask for help when he came out as bisexual.
