On CNN, host Chris Cuomo bravely talks about his battle with mental health (video here).
“I came home many years ago from one tragedy to another. I had weeks of bad dreams and days of flashbacks and emotional confusion.
I realized, over time — people were around me were telling me — that it was affecting me and my relationships.
….I went to someone, they prescribed medication and [said] I had to talk through this, I had to go through the therapy process and understand why I wasn’t processing things that were haunting me.
It helped. A lot. Maybe more than any other treatment I’ve ever had on my body. I made therapy part of my routine, to this day, and it helps, to this day. It is better than the gym, okay?
…. There’s part of me that says I don’t want to rely on it. Everyone says they go to the gym 5 days a week. You say you go to therapy and [feigning shock]. No. Like what, it betrays a weakness in me? Like I care what you think? Or I care about how I take care of myself and those around me.
….Many don’t even consider it an illness like cancer or diabetes or heart disease. Yet none is as daunting as mental illness as far as what it robs us of in this society.
…. Depression is not a mood, it is a malady. It is a medical, treatable illness, and yet we hide from it.”
Later, Cuomo notes that the stigma is particularly bad for men, which is true. There have been relatively few celebrity male voices speaking out about their struggles, or male Christian ones, for that matter. Which is what makes Cuomo and Carson Daly’s revelations, for example, all the more important.
Also, what’s particularly wonderful is that Cuomo is in the field of journalism where he could quite easily be trolled by partisans for being “mentally ill” after acknowledging this battle. Yet he talks anyway. Bravery.
Here’s vid of Cuomo talking about it in another segment.
