The Prison Break star wants people to know that someone is watching and listening and caring. That there is an “Us”… that there is a “We”… and that child or teenager or adult is loved and they are not alone.
Changing the conversation about mental illness
Wentworth Miller, the Prison Break star, has struggled with mental illness and depression since his childhood, even attempting suicide during his teenage years. Miller is an active supporter of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ equality, since 2016. He is an ambassador for Active Minds, a mental health charity that helps combat the stigma around mental health and which empowers students to change their perception about mental health on college campuses. Miller uses his experiences and fame to help change the conversation about mental health.
Wentworth uses his experiences and fame to help change the conversation about mental health
“The first time I tried to kill myself I was fifteen,” admits Wentworth Miller. “When someone asks me if that was a cry for help I say, no, you only cry for help if you believe there is help to cry for, and I didn’t.”
His main struggle was with being a closeted gay man. In 2013 he came out to the public. He would decline an invitation to attend a film festival in Russia because he felt troubled by the Russian government’s treatment of its gay citizens.
“I thought if even one person notices, this letter which I speak and integrate my small story into a much larger more important one, it is worth sending.” Since then he’s been vocal about his own experiences to help others through theirs.
“Let me be the someone else that know one was to me. That someone is watching and listening and caring, that there is an “Us” that there is a “We”, and that kid or teenager or adult is loved and I are not alone.”
Miller has worked on a campaign on depression with The Mighty, an organisation that battles a variety of illnesses. He is involved with The Mankind Project ; which offers personal development programs for men focusing on self awareness of personal growth. “To sit with these men was revolutionary for me. To find a space where you feel like you have permission to be authentic is precious.”
This led him to become an active supporter of the human rights campaign which advocates for LGBTQ equality since 2016. He is in ambassador for Active Minds, a mental health charity that helps combat the stigma around mental health and which empowers students to change their perception about mental health in college campuses.
Wentworth uses his experiences and fame to help change the conversation about mental health.
“We have to be willing to talk about uncomfortable things, unspeakable things that remain unspoken to create a wall of silence…and on the other side of that wall, people are suffering, so we have to be brave in our own time and way that feels safe for us to enter into these conversations and start breaking down stigma, and I think that’s how it’s done; by talking about it, by being open about it.“
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Active Minds: now with more than 400 campus chapters
Active Minds was founded by Alison Malmon when she was a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, following the suicide of her older brother, Brian. Recognising that few Penn students were talking about mental health issues though many were affected, Alison was motivated to change that culture on her campus. She wanted to combat the stigma of mental illness, encourage students who needed help to seek it early, and prevent future tragedies like the one that took her brother’s life. After searching unsuccessfully for existing groups that she could simply bring to her campus, Alison created her own model and formed what was then known as Open Minds. With more than 400 campus chapters, hundreds of thousands of young adults all across the country are benefiting from the Active Minds model.