Chance The Rapper Opens Up About His Mental Health Struggles

Mental health has always been a taboo issue in the Black community. It’s common that Black men withhold their emotions and are often told to “man up” or “suck it up” instead of tackling the issue head-on.

Recently, a number of celebrities, including Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, and Charlamagne Tha God have discussed their mental health struggles publicly.

Chance The Rapper is no stranger to speaking about his mental health issues. He opened up again to another celebrity, Taraji P. Henson about his mental health struggles on her Facebook Watch series, Peace of Mind with Taraji.

In a sneak peek episode, Henson gets a ‘Chance’ to speak with the famous rapper about some of the mental issues he faced growing up and the “dark days” he has encountered.

“Wellness wasn’t something that we knew, you know. There’s probably a ton of situations where people, you know, we just wrote them off as like, crazy, or like they was tweakin’ but they were actually going through like, you know, a chronic, like, a mental health disorder,” the 28-year-old tells Henson and her co-host, Tracie Jade, who is the executive director of Henson’s Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation.

Chance also tells the duo that he deals with anxiety and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from growing up in Chicago and witnessing his friend get murdered in front of him as well as bearing witness to others who got killed.

“You become kind of numb to it like somebody else died last week but it stays with you, you know what I mean?” he says. “And you don’t realize until later like it can have, like lasting effects.”

You can catch a clip of the episode below. The full interview is scheduled to air Monday, Nov. 1, at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET on Facebook Watch.