Carson Daly, co-host of TODAY, delivered a heartfelt speech at the inaugural gala for Project Healthy Minds, a non-profit dedicated to reducing the stigma around mental health and improving access to resources. During his speech, he shared his connection to Project Healthy Minds and his personal mental health journey. Here is the full transcript of his speech:
“I do want to give a little context to my relationship to Project Healthy Minds and this whole movement here. I had the privilege of being around when PHM, as we call it, was born. It was actually six years ago this month.
My friend Logic had performed his song at the VMAs in 2017. It was a song about somebody with depression calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. He did it on the VMAs. And I read an article about how just in the hours after the VMAs, the call skyrocketed to the hotline. It was up by 50%.
Right after that, I interviewed Logic and some guy named Phil Schermer (the CEO of Project Health Minds). That’s where they announced during the interview the birth of Project Healthy Minds.
And that’s when I decided that I didn’t just want to help promote them, I wanted to join them. I wanted to help in the fight.
I had my own mental health story to tell. And I said to Phil, ‘If you ever need me, let me know.’
He called me 20 minutes later.
He said, ‘You’re in.’ Signed me up on the spot, he’s very good at that. And in the three years since, I’ve watched him work his tail off with his group that are all here tonight. They are helping to change the narrative around mental health. That’s the mission of what we’re here to support tonight.
I want to just quickly share a little bit about my mental health story and how I became involved in the community. Before TikTok and Instagram, before Facebook, before all of that, there was ‘Total Request Live.’
The OG.
‘TRL,’ if you don’t know, was television for a generation. It was where you went to interact with your favorite singers and celebrities. It’s how MTV brought small-town kids the world’s biggest stories. It’s where thousands of screaming teenagers tangled Times Square traffic every single day.
It was a safe space for young people. And I was a safe host. I was basically the babysitter for the latchkey kids of America.
It’s also where, one September day, I thought I was going to die.
I was in my dressing room and I could sense all the normal live buzz of the show before it went on. I could hear the crowd outside. I could hear horns honking, normal ‘Total Request’ chaos, very usual.
Then something very unusual happened to me.
Out of nowhere in my dressing room, I felt what I can describe as a snap in my brain. My heart started to race and fear went through my body. It was like somebody cracked one of those cold compresses at a little league game and put it on my neck. I could see my producer talking to me in the doorway, totally normal expression on his face, saying something about Hanson, probably. I couldn’t hear him. It looked like he was talking in slo-mo. I was literally leaving reality. I thought, my God, I’m having a a stroke in front of Hanson. It passed in 30 seconds, but it felt like 30 minutes.
Somehow I was able to get through it. I did the show on autopilot. You know. Number six, here’s 98 degrees, just did my thing. But the whole time, beneath the surface, I was absolutely terrified that whatever had just happened to me, it could happen again at any moment.
So right after the show, I went to my doctor and I said, ‘I need help.’ He ran an entire battery of tests. I said, ‘Give it to me straight. Am I dying of cancer? What is it?’ He was laughing. He said, ‘You’re 100% physically healthy.’ Bullshit. There’s no way. I felt my brain snap in the dressing room.
And he said, ‘Your real problem is that your life is unmanageable. And what you had was called a panic attack.’
I’d never heard of a panic attack, much less considered it. What was the trigger of this panic attack? Was it Nick Lachey? I don’t know. As it turned out, the panic attack was a symptom. Stress and anxiety were the cause. I needed to slow down. I needed to make my unmanageable life manageable.
So I fired my manager. Slowing down didn’t do the trick. I kept having panic attacks. If you’ve never had an intense fight or flight response, the urge to literally drop everything and run, it’s like an out-of-body experience. We call it derealization. Sometimes I can even see myself from above, like I was at Snoops house and he gave me the shit that killed Elvis. This was not an ideal way to live.”
Carson Daly’s speech highlighted his personal journey and his dedication to supporting mental health through Project Healthy Minds.
