Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah opened up about his mental health journey to a group of Minnesota-based high schoolers on Wednesday.
Adofo-Mensah, Vikings defensive tackle Harrison Phillips, and Touchstone Mental Health Vice President Michelle Wincell O’Leary hosted students from Project Success and local Boys & Girls Clubs at the team’s performance center to discuss various mental health topics.
During the panel, Adofo-Mensah opened up about his battle with anxiety.
“For a lot of people in my life, I’m always this calm, happy person – I used to work on Wall Street and now I do this job – and it’s like, ‘You have anxiety?’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, once in a while. I go through a couple things,’ ” Adofo-Mensah said. “Just me telling them that kind of opens their eyes, and they might tell me their own story.”
Adofo-Mensah also opened up about a moment when he was 15, which opened his eyes to mental health.
“When I was probably your age … I was a young kid who thought he had the whole world figured out. ‘Just get up. Stop being weak.’ I was kind of one of those guys,” Adofo-Mensah said. “Then I got cut from the basketball team when I was 15.”
Phillips mentioned that he was impressed with how mental health conversations have become more common than just a decade ago.
“I can see in my six years in the NFL, and three back at Stanford, the difference in how accepted it is and how much we talk about it as alpha male football players,” Phillips said. “It comes up weekly, daily – checking in with our boys.”