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Key points
- One way of challenging the stigma of mental illness is when prominent artists share their struggles with mental health.
- Brent Smith of the rock band Shinedown shares his story of panic and Shinedown's new song about his experience.
- Smith suggests that our struggle with mental health is universal and precisely what makes us human.
When we struggle with mental illness, we often feel “stuck.” There is a sense that we don’t have full control over our mood, thoughts or behavior. This experience can be terrifying. We feel trapped, disconnected from our lives and unable to imagine a way out of our suffering. Adding to our struggle is the sense that we are isolated and alone. That somehow everyone else is emotionally healthy and functioning beautifully in their lives as we contend with our mental illness. This toxic combination of suffering and perceived isolation can result in our feeling shame, perpetuating the stigma of mental illness that we are somehow broken or defective. In more extreme moments, the dysfunction we experience as a result of our mental illness can cause us to feel so disconnected from ourselves and others that it can feel that we're not fully “human.”
How do we challenge the stigma of mental illness? How do we reassure ourselves and help others to feel that we are not defective or alone when we struggle with our mental health? One potential way that we can challenge our own feelings of shame and isolation is when we have some form of contact with people who struggle with mental illness. When we know that others struggle, we may feel less broken or defective, and therefore less isolated. Further, many people who share their story of living with mental illness have found ways of coping that may be useful, thus reducing our sense that we are stuck and unable to make change.
To this end, I spoke with Brent Smith — vocalist, songwriter and founding member of the multi-platinum, chart-topping rock band Shinedown. In 2021, Shinedown was ranked #1 by Billboard on the Greatest of All Time Mainstream Rock Artists chart and has sold more than 10 million records worldwide. The members of Shinedown have often championed mental health advocacy, including most recently partnering with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and donating $1 from every ticket sold from their upcoming tour to the organization. And Brent has personally stepped up to challenge the stigma of mental illness by sharing his story of his mental health struggles throughout his life. In our conversation, Brent and I talk about how he has personally experienced panic attacks, and how the issue of panic is addressed in Shinedown’s new song “A Symptom of Being Human.” And in our conversation, Brent's message is simple. Mental illness is not something that should be a source of stigma or something that makes us "inhuman." In fact, struggling with our mental health is nearly universal, and an important part of our being human.
Smith explained how over his career, he would regularly experience panic attacks — especially when he was on stage. “For people that have never had a panic attack, it's one of those things where you literally feel like you're about to die. Like you're gonna leave your body … You have no way to decompress. You have no way to calm down. You're overstimulated,” Smith told me. “I've had panic attacks on stage more times than I can count.”
Drawing on his own experience with anxiety, Smith hypothesized that many people may have been experiencing a similar sense of panic during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the song “A Symptom of Being Human," Smith utilized the image of being in “a room where I don’t belong” as a metaphor for panic. “I was really thinking about what a lot of people on the planet were probably going through. And that idea … Sometimes I'm in a room where I don't belong. And the house is on fire, and there's no alarm, and the walls are melting, too,” he explained. “The house is your mind … the thoughts that you're left alone with at night, when you're by yourself.”
From Smith’s perspective, while the experience of the panic can be overwhelming and painful, it can also be an opportunity. In fact, he has reframed his anxiety not as a sign that something is wrong with him — but rather that something is right with him. “I've been doing this professionally for two decades now. And one of the most comfortable places I feel at home is on stage — whether it's in front of five people, or it's in front of 500,000 people … But what never changes for me is I am literally terrified. And when I say terrified, I mean before I opened my mouth on the first song of the set, I'm terrified,” Smith said. “I would be more nervous if I wasn't nervous because it lets me know I'm alive. It lets me know that I care. It lets me know that the people that are in front of me, I'm here to perform for them. Because … our goal for the people that walked in is to make sure they float out. We want to lift them up.”
While the tranquility that we often feel when we are not anxious can be comforting, Smith questions whether we can achieve our purpose in life without anxiety. He views fear as a sign that we are on the right track in our lives — pushing ahead to be the best version of ourselves. “If you're comfortable all the time, you're not growing necessarily. Doesn't necessarily mean that you're backtracking. But you're not necessarily moving forward. The only way to make monumental change is you have to get out of your comfort zone … and push it forward,” he described. “Whatever your 'A' plan is, that's what you should go after. That's what you should do ... It doesn't matter how long it takes … I'm not gonna tell you that it's gonna be easy … You have to be willing to own up to your faults. You have to be willing to own up to your fear. And you have to be willing to understand that if you're a person that doesn't believe that you can be happy, the most uncomfortable thing that you could do is go try to find happiness.”
By embracing our struggle with mental health, such as when we experience panic, we come to recognize that this struggle is not what makes us "inhuman." In fact, facing our mental illness and still trying to function and achieve our life goals can be what unites us and makes us "human." “Being a human being is the journey … I think more than anything, you have to understand that everybody's going through something, no matter what you may believe. Everybody's got a story. And everybody's got a story that is being written every single day that they're on this planet,” Smith explained. “You need to fail in life. That's what hones who you are. That's what helps you grow as an individual. Your life and your legacy are not going to be built around the foundation of your failures. Your life and your legacy will be built around the fact that you refuse to give up.”
Smith is ultimately encouraged by what he sees as a trend of more people, including prominent artists like himself, stepping up and sharing their struggles as a way of challenging the stigma of mental illness. “And the good news is, at least in my opinion ... there are a lot more people that are willing to talk about the way that people are feeling now, like what we're doing and expressing these types of subject matter,” he said.
But Smith realizes there is much work to be done as we as individuals and as a society challenge the stigma of mental illness. “But again, Rome wasn't built in a day. We're all a work in progress," Smith described.
"That's part of being alive.”
Listen to my full conversation with Brent Smith here.
