Bryce Young is ready to change the stigma surrounding mental health in professional football

The Carolina Panthers quarterback sat down with GQ to discuss the importance of mental health and his desire to destigmatize the conversations around it.

Bryce Young has been through a lot in just two NFL seasons. He started at a precipice of sorts being the first overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft after the Carolina Panthers traded a haul to move up and make the pick. He was greeted by what turned out to be a very dysfunctional and short lived coaching staff that steered the team to a 2-15 record. Young didn’t look the part of an NFL quarterback, and after two brutal weeks to start his sophomore campaign, just about everyone was out on the young signal caller.

After a benching, Young returned to the starting lineup and finished the year with several very promising weeks. It was a truly remarkable bounce back for a player that had more than enough reasons to crumble mentally. Instead, Young rediscovered his confidence and revived his already wilting career prospects.

Young did an interview with GQ where he discussed his mental health and how he wants to change the stigma around it in the NFL. He’s hosting a youth camp in Charlotte on Saturday, and one of the focuses of that camp will be the mental health of the players involved. In his GQ interview, Young talked about weaving in some mental health strategies and also providing resources to parents to help their kids navigate the world of being a competitive athlete.

Young comes from a family of mental health professionals, so he’s a natural voice to talk about the importance of the topic. He’s uniquely aware of the importance of mental health and the differences in how people handle it. He spoke about the different ways he keeps himself grounded with breathing exercises and meditation as well the importance of continuing to value oneself even while doing whatever they can to help the team.

It was refreshing to read a player talking about a separation between mental health and on field results. Too often players are expected to be almost inhuman and fully tether themselves to their on field performance. Any mental health struggles are often dismissed with some version of “go cry into your millions of dollars,” and that’s a gross oversimplification of the human experience.

Young is being open about the off field mentals of being an NFL quarterback. Hopefully it’s just the start of a movement where taking care of one’s mental health comes more to the forefront of being a professional athlete, and if we’re lucky, the people consuming the product will get on board as well.