Chance The Rapper Opens Up About Mental Health and PTSD

Mental health has always been a taboo issue within the Black community where, specifically with Black men, we are always told to “man up” or “suck it up” instead of tackling the issue head-on. Recently, many celebrities from Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles to the likes of Charlamagne Tha God have been more open to discussing it publicly.

Chance The Rapper, who is no stranger to speaking about his mental health issues opens up again to another celebrity, Taraji P. Henson who also discusses mental health issues with her Facebook Watch series, Peace of Mind with Taraji.

In a sneak peek episode posted on the social media platform for the upcoming interview with the Chicago rapper, Henson gets a ‘Chance’ to speak to him about some of the mental issues he has 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 seeing others he doesn’t know, get killed.

“Obviously I deal with PTSD, I saw my friend killed in front of me when I was, uh, 19, I’ve seen a few 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 it can have, like lasting effects.”

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

Chance The Rapper Opens Up About Mental Health and PTSD