Vaultboy Unmasks His Struggles with Anxiety and Depression

In January 2021, pop artist vaultboy teased his single, “everything sucks,” on TikTok as part of a challenge titled “writing a song everyday and posting it.” On day 12 of the challenge, the video hit three million views and the rest is history. vaultboy’s debut single has now reached over 140 million streams on Spotify and he’s been steadily growing ever since. The Jacksonville, FL native chose his moniker after being inspired by a character in his favorite video game series, Fallout. 

This month, vaultboy is featured on Sound Mind’s latest episode of Unmasked, a video series that features artists opening up about their personal mental health journeys. In the new episode, he speaks out about his own struggle with anxiety and depression. 

“The amount of people silently struggling with mental health issues is immeasurable. We’re all going through this similar thing, to different degrees, and sometimes we need to be reminded that this fight isn’t our own,” he told Billboard. 

In early 2022, vaultboy was experiencing massive success in music, but was also feeling very depressed and struggling to appreciate where he was at in life. He channeled those feelings into songwriting and wrote more honest, vulnerable tracks. The latest episode of Unmasked includes never-before-seen footage of vaultboy recording some of his most personal lyrics to-date. 

vaultboy strives to be a mental health advocate for his fanbase and believes in the importance of destigmatizing the difficult conversations that mental health discussions can bring.

“The most important thing for me is keeping the conversation around mental health in the light and normalizing checking in with each other and ourselves,” he continued. By keeping this conversation in the forefront of our culture, we can make it easier for people to be aware of when and how to get care.”

Unmasked is focused on promoting mental health resources, as well as fostering an open dialogue about mental health for artists and audiences alike. Check out vaultboy on the latest episode of Unmasked above and stay tuned for more from Sound Mind. 

This content was created in partnership with Sound Mind. 

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