Actor Wil Wheaton Talks About His Anxiety Disorder to Assure Teens With Mental Illnesses That They Aren’t Alone

Actor, producer and writer Wil Wheaton recently opened up to Project UROK to talk about his daily struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Chronic Depression in order to help others, particularly teenagers, understand their own mental health issues and assure them that they’re not alone.

And I want to say it was a week and a half, or something like that, probably close to 2 weeks, after I started treatment, my wife and I were just having a walk in the neighborhood, and I realized that it was a really beautiful day. And it was warm, and there was this wonderful little bit of a breeze, and birds sounded really beautiful, and flowers smelled really great, and my wife’s hand felt really good in my hand, and we’re walking, and I just started to cry. And she was like, what’s wrong? I was like, I just realized that I don’t feel bad. I just realized, that I’m not existing, I’m living. Like that normal for me was changing. …And it was the beginning of this journey that continues, of learning how to live life with depression, rather than living life through depression.

Project UROK is a non-profit dedicated to using user-submitted videos to help teens work through the struggle of mental illness.

Project UROK is a nonprofit organization founded in 2014 by Jenny Jaffe. Our mission is to create funny, meaningful videos for teenagers struggling with mental health issues, made by people who have been there before. In doing so, we will provide not only practical assistance, but also a sense of belonging, a sense of comfort, and a sense of hope