Good everyone. My name is Dan Hunt, former NRL player with the St. George Illawarra Dragons and co-founder and CEO of the company Mental Health Movement. Today I'm going to share my story around experiencing mental health struggles, being diagnosed with a mental illness, and how I work through that to become mentally healthy—and then obviously create a movement to build mentally healthy, supportive workplaces.

Some of the things I talk about can be a little bit confronting. My intention isn't to upset anyone. My intention is to connect, to cut through the stigma, the stereotype, the judgment, and give people an understanding that you can live with a mental illness and be mentally healthy. But also to reinforce the importance of support networks and reaching out when we need it, because we are not alone.

Childhood Trauma and the Power of Sport

For myself, I grew up pretty tough. I grew up in domestic violence, in physical violence, emotional violence. As I got older, I realized that that is childhood trauma. These things would come back and affect me in my adult years in ways I couldn't imagine. I was taught growing up, though, to get on with it, to get over it, and harden up. And that's exactly what I did. I swept it under the carpet. I pretended like it wasn't there.

As a young adolescent, a young teenager, I lacked a real sense of identity, purpose, and belonging. I was looking for it in all the wrong places and struggled quite a bit. I was very lucky that I had the opportunity to break the cycle in which I was growing up, and I did that through sport—specifically, through rugby league. I wasn't a bad rugby league player as a young fella, and I was able to make a few rep teams where you start to be around more positive people. You start to see and do more positive things. It gave me somewhere to channel a lot of the things I experienced and was struggling with, put it into something really positive, and it really put me on the straight and narrow.

The NRL Dream and the Roller Coaster Mask

I was lucky enough in 2007 to make my NRL debut with the St. George Illawarra Dragons, which was obviously an absolute dream come true. But you are coming into an environment where you've got 30 men testing yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally every single day. For me, I had all that stuff from my past that was still affecting me—my thoughts, my feelings, my behaviors—but I had no understanding, no awareness, and no education around it.

It used to be a bit of a running joke. My nickname when I played footy was "Bubsy." I used to have a baby face, but the joke was always: where was Bubsy on the roller coaster? Was he at the top? He was good fun, good to be around. Or was he at the bottom? Don't go near him. I struggled with different things, even holding conversations. For me, look, that was just part of the environment. I put on the mask with a brave face and tried to convince everyone else around me that I was all good, when really inside I was struggling. I just didn't want anyone else to know that because I was afraid of what they'd say, how they'd treat me, or whether I'd lose my contract. Maybe they were just my own insecurities and perceptions, but I just suffered in silence.

2010: Hitting Rock Bottom

It all came to a head for me in 2010. I was playing the best footy of my career. I hadn't had any injuries, I started every game, I think we won 11 straight that year, and we were the favorites to win the premiership (which the team did go on to win). It was in a game during the warm-up; I turned in a warm-up drill and ruptured my Achilles tendon. I was out for the next 12 months.

I had to watch the team go on to win the grand final. Not playing in that game, you don't feel like you're a part of it. The older I've gotten now, I do feel a part of it, and the club did get me a premiership ring, which meant the absolute world to me. But at the time, I really struggled. The thing that had kept me on the straight and narrow was taken away. Something happened that I didn't understand then, but I definitely understand now: all that stuff from my past and my upbringing that I'd never dealt with, never processed, came back and hit me like an absolute ton of bricks.

I didn't know how to deal with it, I didn't know how to cope, and I wasn't putting my hand up and asking for help because that's not how I was brought up. When you have surgery, you get introduced to painkillers. I started to take them to take away the physical pain, but then I started to take them to take away the emotional pain. I started to mix them with illicit drugs, with alcohol, with anger, with isolation. I was trying to numb the pain I was experiencing; I was trying to escape reality. For a short period of time, that substance was a solution because it did quieten the head noise down. But over an extended period of time, it put me in the worst place I'd ever been in—to the point where I almost didn't end up here.

Planting Seeds: The Turning Points

Everybody's journey is different because everybody is different. But a few distinct things happened that got me to the point of finally seeking support:

• A Mother's Warning: My mom came over one day. I was living by myself and she was obviously worried about me—I was only 22 at the time. She sat with me and said something I'll never forget: "You're becoming your father." I had the blinkers on and didn't realize the impact I was having on myself and the people around me. I still didn't seek support right then, but it planted a seed.
• The Power of Education: The Black Dog Institute, a leader in mental illness treatment and research, partnered with the NRL to do an awareness session. A gentleman was up speaking, and it felt like everything he was saying was directed straight to me. We were given a resource with a link to a self-assessment. I went home, did it, and it came back with red flags stating I needed to seek clinical professional help. It scared the absolute hell out of me, but it was another seed planted.
• A Leader Who Connected: I was coming into training as part of the rehab crew. I was no longer wearing the mask; I wasn't happy "Bubsy" making everyone laugh, and players could see that. Because we lacked education 15 years ago, people took a wide berth from me. But Wayne Bennett, our coach at the time—an absolute master and mentor—identified it. He pulled me aside. I thought I was in trouble, but he just checked in. He asked how I was traveling, if I was okay. I gave the usual, "Yeah, yeah, I'm all good." He looked directly at me and said, "No, you're not."

"A lot of people steer away from these conversations because we don't know what someone might say, or we feel like we can't fix or solve it... Our role and responsibility isn't to fix, solve, or diagnose. It's to connect."

Wayne didn't give me a magic answer. He just said, "I'm going to support you to get the support you need, and I'm going to be there every step of the way." He encouraged me to talk to my partner, Nadine. I felt like I had dropped the ball or failed as a man, a provider, and a protector, and I worried she would leave. But she didn't. She stayed staunch, and to this day, she is my number one supporter.

The Diagnosis: A Line in the Sand

Nadine and I went to the Black Dog Institute together. I spent a day with a psychologist, a clinical psych, and a psychiatrist, going through family history, substance use, and personality traits. In November of 2010, I was diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder.

Honestly, getting that diagnosis—other than having my kids and meeting my wife—has been the best thing that's ever happened to me. People ask how that can be. When you suffer in silence your whole life with no tools, riding a roller coaster to the point where you don't want to be here anymore, a diagnosis gives you a line in the sand. I didn't look at it as a label; I looked at it no differently than how I rehabilitated my injured Achilles. It was a matter of: Okay, this is where I'm at. What do I now need to put in place to better manage my mental health and my illness?

That started my true mental health journey. It involved an inpatient stay, getting medication right, and finding the right clinical psychologist. I didn't connect with the first psychologist I saw, but my family encouraged me to get a second opinion. A lot of people have a bad first experience and never go back, but if you don't connect, you have to find another option. I found a clinical psychologist who I have been working with for 15 years now. I still see her once a month for what I call a "checkup from the neck up." We get our cars serviced, our taxes done, and our houses cleaned by experts—but when it comes to our mental health, we tend to forget about it.

Finding Identity Beyond the Jersey

I eventually got back to playing footy, both mentally and physically healthy. I spoke to my team, shared my diagnosis and upbringing, and apologised because I felt like I had let them down. From that, other players started opening up to me. I realised the immense power of story. We all have a story, and everybody's story matters.

I went on to play 150 games in the NRL with the Dragons, something I am incredibly proud of. However, my career ended abruptly in 2015 when I was medically retired due to a severe knee injury at age 28. I still had three years on my contract. The thing that kept me on the straight and narrow was taken away permanently. I worried I'd spiral back to where I was in 2010, but I knew that knowledge without application is useless. I communicated how I felt, put my support networks in place, and worked to find out who I was without the jersey on.

Building the Mental Health Movement

My wife and I wrote a note on my phone: "I want to create something in the mental health space to help as many people as possible." We created the Mental Health Movement to shift perceptions. We chose the workplace because most of us were never taught these things growing up, and we spend about a third of our lives at work.

Following Wayne Bennett's advice to surround myself with the smartest people, we brought on clinical professionals and researchers to build data-driven programs. As of April 2026, we have been operating for a decade.

Our Impact Over 10 Years (A Decade of Change)

Honestly, I find more identity, purpose, and belonging in what I do now than I ever did playing footy—and that is with no disrespect to footy, which I absolutely love. The Mental Health Movement means the world to me.