Singer and songwriter Hunter Hayes opened up about his struggles with mental health. He also shares why being an official ambassador for the leading brain health nonprofit organization is important to him.
The 29-year-old country singer said that like many others during the COVID-19 pandemic, the new normal made him reprioritize mental wellness. “I’ve heard it from a lot of different walks of life, a lot of different stories, and a lot of different sort of histories, and definitely felt it myself.” Hunter has connected with millions of people with his deeply personal songs but he says that he wasn’t always so confident about opening up. He started having conversations around mental health with the song “invisible” in 2014. Hunter says he had different conversations with his fans and they shared stories about their lives trusting him. This connection made him realize how hard he was on himself earlier in his career and how much he was stressing himself to achieve success while actually burning out. He also added that many people think that successful people must be really happy which is a dangerous assumption.
Hayes teams up with One Mind, a leading brain health non-profit focused on creating a community to voice out about mental health. As an ambassador of One Mind Hayes understands the importance of having conversations about mental health and also sharing his own experience to better himself. Hayes ends by saying that “I feel very invited, I guess, to be all of me and have these conversations and It’s been really rewarding and I’m very grateful.”
