Kevin Smith Opens Up About Recent Mental Health Crisis

Filmmaker and geek icon Kevin Smith today shared a lengthy video in which he discusses his recent struggles with mental health, revealing that he recently checked into an inpatient treatment center in Arizona for help with a serious mental health crisis. The wide-ranging video deals with what Smith calls a “break from reality” in which he felt like he wasn’t sure the “real” Kevin Smith existed, and calls all the way back to the childhood trauma that his therapists suggest helped to shape his “people-pleasing” identity. Struggling with his weight and childhood sexual abuse, Smith says, led him to become someone who entertains others for a living. After all, you can’t hurt a guy who hosts Fat Man on Batman by calling him fat.

Smith developed “the other guy” or “That Kevin Smith” — the public-facing version of himself that he says the world (and Smith  himself) found to be the best version of him. Smith says that the Sierra Tucson treatment center in Arizona literally saved his life.

“At that moment, I wouldn’t have been averse to not being around any longer,” Smith said. “I called a friend and said, ‘I’m in a weird, dark place. I need to go somewhere and get help.’”

You can see Smith’s video (via People) below.

Smith says in the video that one of the things he has tried to learn is that the body processes all trauma — small and massive — in the same way. He also said that part of what he wants to do in the near future is to find things that he likes to do independent of “the other guy” and outside of the world of selling merch and being a social media presence. 

“I have been a creature of the internet for 27 years,” Smith said. “It’s not like I’m quitting Twitter or something like that, but if you want to see me, you’ll see me live…and we’ll talk. But don’t look for me online, kids, because I’m going to be looking for happiness.”

“I’m terrified to see everyone’s reaction to [all of this],” Smith told People. “But I know there’s somebody out there who doesn’t know this stuff—like I didn’t—who could get something out of this.”

Smith recently announced that he had decided to stop smoking marijuana — something that he says was serving as a “Band-Aid” on his gaping emotional wounds.