Rapper DMC opens up about his mental health struggles

Jul 24, 2016

There is a new book out from Darryl “DMC” McDaniels called Ten Ways Not To Commit Suicide in which he talks about mental health issues, a topic close to his heart.

This new book picks up shortly after his previous 2001 book, King Of Rock, left off. In 2003, his group mate Jam Master Jay was murdered, and this new autobiography covers the various stages of emotion that McDaniels has gone through since the killing.

His new book also describes the struggles he has endured in the search for his birth mother. It was this search that led McDaniels into a dark spiral of alcoholism and depression.

In 2004, he decided it was time to seek professional help and calls it one of the ”best things” any man but especially a black man can do.

“When I went to therapy I realized something that most men – I don’t care what race, creed, or color you are, but especially black men – I realized that therapy isn’t ‘soft’,” he stated to the media. “My saying is, ‘Therapy is gangsta.’ It actually empowered me. It allowed me to say things that I thought about, but I would never want to hear myself say those things.”

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, approximately 43.8 million adult Americans suffer from mental illness each year, with black Americans 20% more likely to suffer from serious mental health issues.

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McDaniels wrote his book in part to reach out to those suffering from mental illnesses and show then that there is help available to them if they are ready to ask for it.

“If you don’t discuss your mental health and therapy we will keep having this unnecessary cycle of us missing signals, signs and opportunities to eradicate the mental conditions that is brought on because of a continuation of a repeated cycle,” he said. “And we miss the chance to fully diagnose and treat the individuals who have mental health problems. So it’s important that people talk about it.”