Behind every viral song we replay, every studio session, and every sold-out stadium tour is an ecosystem of unseen human labor. The music industry is powered by thousands of dedicated individuals — musicians, producers, DJs, stagehands, and live engineers — who work behind the scenes to bring us the sounds and live experiences we enjoy.
And every May, during Mental Health Awareness Month, this same industry undergoes a coordinated marketing push to acknowledge the mental health of these professionals. While framed as a way to bring light to their struggles, it often plays out like a corporate box being checked off for public relations.
As infographics and curated playlists flood our feeds, the big question remains: which of these initiatives are truly helping the many behind the scenes who need real support? What does it look like to provide adequate support for artists navigating mental health crises while maintaining their careers? And what happens when that safety net is difficult to access?
Big Boss Vette's Silent Battle
For St. Louis-born rapper Big Boss Vette, these are not hypothetical questions. The Atlanta-based rapper, known for viral breakout hits like "Pretty Girls Walk" and "Snatched," has released major projects, including her 2023 debut EP Resilience, since the start of her career. Still, early in her career, she had to deal with a toxic relationship behind closed doors while the grueling expectations of an emerging star forced her to mask her reality.
"I still had to show up as an artist," Vette recalls. "I didn't want to go back to a 9-to-5... so I just put my mental health on the back burner, and I just kept on pushing through. Because that was the only thing that I knew how to do… [and] sometimes you got to pick your livelihood over your mental."
When asked whether the music industry offered any baseline structural support or a mental health blueprint during that period, Vette felt that nothing was available to her.
"Hopefully, you have an amazing team that will keep you grounded,” she shared. "It is up to you to go seek therapy and all that. They don't say, 'Hey, we all know that you're not feeling good today, so let's not drop this on you.' Literally, the industry kept moving. Everything kept going. Your mental health is yours alone to take care of."
This absence of structural protection became a matter of life or death when Vette was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer known as Sinonasal cancer, as her career was on the rise in 2025. She then went on the internet to search for information because she didn't have access to resources for chronic illnesses and rare cancers.
"When I was first diagnosed, and I started looking up people with the same type of cancer and things of that nature… everybody I found was dead," Vette shares candidly. "So essentially, in the beginning, there was no hope. Like, none. I was terrified.”
Faced with a diagnosis that carries a 50/50 chance of survival, she repeated positive affirmations while she sought her doctor's prescribed treatment of chemotherapy and radiation. Vette also had a large, loving village of family and friends holding her down. However, she quickly discovered that well-meaning loved ones could not fully mirror the specific terror of a terminal diagnosis; she desperately needed a support group consisting of those actively experiencing the same medical issue.
"The only way to relate to someone with cancer is to have cancer. And I don't want none of [my family and friends] to have it,” said Vette.
Driven by that specific loneliness, Vette chose to take matters into her own hands. She is using her platform to shed light on her experiences through content creation, a documentary, Pretty Girls Walk Strong, about her wellness journey, and sharing resources with those who reach out with specific questions about rare cancers. Since ringing the bell — a common ritual cancer survivors participate in to celebrate recovery — she is taking an indefinite break from releasing music.
"My current focus is just living, honestly speaking," Vette says. "I just realized that the life I was living was really not my own, and I was living for people… Now I can live in my truth, walk in my truth, and talk about my truth."
The Frontlines of Accountability: MusiCares
Big Boss Vette is one of the many people in the music industry that MusiCares is actively working to build and provide mental health resources for.
“For an artist who feels overwhelmed or unsupported, the most immediate step is reaching out for connection, and that is where MusiCares can help,” says Theresa Wolters, MusiCares’ executive director.
“We provide access to mental health services, financial assistance for basic living needs, and referrals to trusted providers who understand the unique pressures of the music industry,” Wolters explains, continuing that several factors contribute to an artist’s mental health outcomes, including lack of adequate health care access, experiences like harassment or assault, and financial obstacles. Additionally, MusiCares' data illustrates that artists face a fractured broader ecosystem of care when in need.
According to Wolters, the intersecting pressures of a 24/7 landscape and inflation of touring margins have created an unprecedented mental health emergency for music workers across the industry.
"Through both our direct services and insights from our Wellness in Music survey, we are seeing a clear shift in both the volume and nature of need," Wolters explains.
The metrics backing Wolters’ warning are alarming. In MusiCares’ recent survey of 3,200 music professionals, a staggering 11.4% reported experiencing suicidal ideation within the past year — a metric more than double the national average of the general U.S. population. Requests for emergency crisis intervention regarding acute anxiety, chronic stress and severe occupational burnout have risen. So, what is anyone doing about this issue? Wolters points to one of their partners, Amber Health, for advancing full-service mental health and wellness provider services to festivals’ staff and tours, including global acts like Billie Eilish, Beyoncé and Shakira. Amber Health has also worked with larger organizations like Universal Music Group to scale their reach across the industry.
MusiCares is focusing on ongoing partnerships to support musicians, such as their work with The Jed Foundation to provide suicide prevention resources and training tailored to the music community, while continuing to grow access to both mental health and broader health care services.
While MusiCares continues to deploy financial lifelines and preventative care such as dental, vision, and hearing health, and emergency mental health referrals, Wolters emphasizes that philanthropy cannot be a substitute for baseline corporate responsibility.
"Philanthropy is only one part of what should be a broader, more sustainable ecosystem of care," Wolters states. "Sustainable change will come from building on this momentum. That includes embedding mental health support into touring and recording structures, investing in preventative care, and continuing to evolve compensation models so they better reflect the realities of today’s music economy.”
Wolters says music professionals can reach out to help@musicares.org, visit www.musicares.org/get-help, or call 800-687-4227 for information on available services.
Grassroots Infrastructure: Pushing Beyond Corporate Neglect
Because major record labels and streaming giants have historically neglected this structural responsibility, artists have increasingly been forced to utilize their own platforms to engineer their own safety nets, especially in modern hip-hop.
A prominent example of this grassroots work is Chicago rapper G Herbo. Moving past performative wellness messaging, Herbo launched his Swervin’ Through Stress initiative in 2020 as a direct response to his own public journey with PTSD and complex trauma. Herbo evolved his work into an official non-profit organization in 2023.
Partnering with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Herbo directly funded multi-month therapy sessions for Black youth and young creators, intentionally connecting them with culturally competent Black behavioral health specialists to help them address long-term community trauma.
Similarly, Houston rapper Monaleo has emerged as a vital voice for mental wellness, continually using her platform to dismantle the intense stigmas surrounding depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. She launched her initiative, Stay One More Day, which is dedicated to two core missions: raising mental health awareness and assisting students in managing healthy coping mechanisms.
Following the tragic passing of rhymer Juice WRLD in 2019, his mother, Carmela Wallace, established the Live Free 999 fund to normalize the conversation around addiction, anxiety, and depression in underserved communities. As of May 2026, the organization is fundraising for a physical space dedicated to connection, healing and creativity.
Yet, despite these monumental, deeply personal efforts initiated years ago by Juice WRLD's team and fellow artists, the broader industry’s institutional support models have not kept pace with the compounding crises that contemporary artists face daily. Grassroots charity is doing the structural lifting that billion-dollar entertainment corporations actively avoid.
Dismantling the Barriers to Empathy
Because artists face a 24/7 cycle of public consumption and scrutiny regardless of their physical or mental condition, artists like Big Boss Vette, G Herbo and Monaleo are using transparency to break these norms.
For Big Boss Vette, conquering a life-threatening battle gave her the perspective to stop performing a curated fairytale for the masses. Her final piece of advice serves as an urgent, protective mandate for any young creator trying to keep their spirit intact while navigating life in the music industry.
"Speak life into yourself, no matter how you feel, no matter how you look, speak life," Vette insists. "They gonna judge you when you're doing good. They gonna judge when you're doing bad. They gonna judge you when you're dead. Just, just be you. Do not allow this industry to turn you into a monster because it has a habit of doing things like that to [artists]."
