When asked when the band decided to wrap their arms around Mental Health Awareness as a band, Dan said:
“All of us collectively have had dealt with the issues of addiction or depression, whether it was us individually or close family members or close friends, as most people have. But it really hit home early on when we were in the writing process, and in the studio, I had mentioned to David cause a lot of times when we start writing, we’ve written over 100 something songs together, so sometimes he’ll turn to us and say ‘hey is there anything trying to spark a new idea or new subject that we haven’t touched on before’. And um, I had mentioned to him early on that I wanted to kinda touch on, cause i have a close family member to me that has had his struggles with addiction. And ya know, I know what a great guy he is… and it’s uh my brother… ya know he just he’s had his battles and he’s struggled with it but he’s a great guy and I could see ya know the shame in his eyes of feeling like he let himself down, but let everybody else down. And um ya know so I’m always there pulling for him because I know that um its a demon and its something you have to battle every day when you get to that point. And we wanted to spin the positivity to it to just letting those who are fighting those demons to keep fighting and they’re not alone. And it’s our job to kind of step in and intervene and hope that we can be that added strength to them to help continue in that fight.”
When discussing the song “A Reason to Fight,” Dan said:
“It’s such a deep personal topic for us and we knew how much it hit home for us and how therapeutic it was for us to play this song live and get this message out but we never really knew the magnitude of how much it hits so many people in the audience because of their own experience. So when we have our moment in the live show and David takes a moment to… we either play a PSA video that kind of informs the fans of the demons and David will usually address the crowd and have a moment where he’s ask them for anybody who has been in that position to raise their hand, have a show of hands, and don’t be afraid to raise your hands. And when you see a majority of that crowd, almost every single person raising their hands, it makes the reality of it kicks in of how much it’s affected everybody. And it also kicks in that you realize that you’re not alone on this and there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Video of Disturbed at Rock USA filmed by Jason Gessert
