Professor Green tells it like it is
By Hayden Moore
STEPHEN Paul Manderson, also known by his rapper moniker Professor Green, visited Tallaght Stadium to sit down and meet with mental health advocates in the local area.
As part of the First Fortnight Festival, the London native who is best known for his song ‘Read All About It’, opened up about his own personal struggles with his mental health and gave some words of inspiration to others.
Echo Reporter Hayden Moore spoke to Professor Green in Tallaght Stadium
“That’s the problem, you don’t want people to see you as vulnerable and, in most incidences, it’s accepting yourself and your own vulnerabilities – you deny them,” said Stephen to a room full of local mental health leaders.
“Which is a weakness and actually there’s strength in meeting your vulnerabilities and being aware of them.
“You can’t really work on your own vulnerabilities if you’re not aware of them or if you’re ignoring them and pretending that they don’t exist.
“There’s not a person in this room that doesn’t have an insecurity or isn’t vulnerable in some way.”
When Stephen was 25, he lost his father to suicide and the rapper suppressed how he was feeling for a number of years until he released a single in 2011 about his untimely passing.
He said: “I started rapping about things that I was seeing and going through and made a song called Read All About It, which was about my dad’s suicide.”
“I’d always spoken about personal stuff in my music but that started a conversation outside of music because I had to talk about that song because of the success of it, which put me in a kind of weird space where I was having to regularly talk about my dad’s suicide.
“It was something I never spoke about – not friends, not family – typical stiff British upper-lip.
“Because we have to, resilience is a necessity you know, you have to be resilient to be able to carry on – but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it makes it easier to carry on.”
Before the special event, Stephen AKA Professor Green caught up with The Echo to offer some words of advice to those who may be struggling with their mental health saying: “My advice to anyone that’s going through mental health issues or thinks they might be struggling with a mental health problem, is find someone to talk to and that’s not always the easiest thing because sometimes it’s not easy to open up to people.
“You don’t want to be seen as vulnerable or weak.
“Just know that being aware and being honest about your vulnerabilities is a strength, it’s not a weakness.
“It’s finding the right person, really my advice is to find whoever that person might be, whether it is a friend or family member or whether it’s someone who is a professional.
“It’s being open and finding help, taking that first step.”
