Thank you WSCR-AM 670’s Dan McNeil

When a radio show host had the chance to remain silent about mental illness, he chose to #BreakTheSilence and confront the bully of his healing.

After over half my life has been consumed by PTSD and the efforts to help veterans to heal, getting them to overcome the stigma, has been the hardest thing to do. Someone decided that mental illness was something to be ashamed of, and that is the message they got.

This is for anyone with a mental illness, no matter what it is. No matter what it is caused by or what label it has been given. 

The truth is, there is no shame for you unless you put it there. Do you really care what other people think about you, more than what you think about yourself?

Mental illness is real and so is taking steps to live the best life possible by doing what is possible to living happier ever after!

Well this radio show guy just won one for all of you last night!

After 'dead pool' pick, radio host Dan McNeil shares mental health struggle: 'I must confess, this guy got to me'

Chicago Tribune
Phil Rosenthal
January 18, 2019

Sharing a vulnerability uncommon among sports radio hosts, WSCR-AM 670’s Dan McNeil laid himself bare in a post-midnight Facebook post Friday.

McNeil, 57, apparently was triggered by a text from a listener who informed him he had been selected in the listener’s so-called dead pool in which the deaths of those chosen score points weighted toward the decedent’s relative youth.

Despite initially seeming to laugh off the note as he might on the air — “Give the dude credit for a sound investment strategy; I’m a good ‘value pick’ in a pool like that” — McNeil responded with soulful ruminations on living with vices, mental health issues and suicide.

Then he shared the impact he imagined his death would have on his three grown sons.

“I must confess, this guy got to me,” McNeil wrote. “I even cried a few times. Daydreaming about my sons’ sadness over the void in their lives is an optic I’d just as soon avoid.

“What kind of human has so much contempt for a radio show, he wishes for — at the minimum, bets on — a guy’s death? So, hoping that guy is reading this — as I did on the air, hoping he was listening — I want him to quickly meet my sons, now bereaved by the loss of their dad.”
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