Bears running back David Montgomery opened up about the mental health struggles that he’s experienced during his first three seasons in Chicago. Montgomery recently revealed that he’s going to be a father, and he spoke about the positive effect that it’s already had on him.
“I wasn’t in a good place, like the last three years I hadn’t been in a good place mentally,” he said. “And I’m open to say like how I was and where I was at and what I was facing and what I was kind of going through mentally, but it wasn’t a good place for me.
“But me knowing that I got a child on the way and me knowing that I got to be the best version of myself for my girl and be like a better man for her, I want to be able to be the best father I can be for my child, so whatever it takes and whatever steps I got to take to be the best version of myself for my child, I’m willing to do.”
While things were certainly difficult for the Bears during his three years in the league, Montgomery explained what he was going through personally. How he struggled with not meeting his own high expectations and the daily mental health battle he dealt with as a result.
“I was just mentally depressed. I was depressed. I was,” he said. “Since I was here as a rookie, it had nothing to do with the coaches, it was more so with myself, not having met the standards or the expectations that I put on myself going back to creating those unnecessary pressures for myself.
“You know, a lot of people don’t understand being in the NFL, like us as individuals, we go through a lot of mental battles on a daily basis, but since we’re athletes and we’re professionals and we get a lot of money, that gets overlooked, but at the end of the day, we’re still human beings and people forget about that.
“So for me, for a while, I masked it, I let it be what it was. … (But) I could not continue to live my life unhappy, so I was just in a bad place like mentally, like how I was looking at life, how I viewed it. I was unhappy, but it’s on the up and up now and I’m grateful and I’m blessed that God brought me here and I’m here where I’m at.”
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