Jon Hamm has long been vocal about the benefits of going to therapy. The actor, 54, is just as dedicated to attending therapy sessions now as he was 20 years ago.
Hamm, who currently stars on Apple TV+’s Your Friends & Neighbors, wasn’t always so clear-minded. Ahead of the final season premiere in 2015 of AMC’s Mad Men, the show for which he’s best known, Hamm spent 30 days in a rehabilitation center for alcoholism. The constant pressure of being “pulled in 52 different directions,” he told GQ for its June cover story, contributed to his eventual breakdown. It was around this time that the actor also separated from his longtime partner Jennifer Westfeldt and became embroiled in a resurfaced fraternity hazing scandal.
“There was a three-week stretch where I shot Monday through Friday on Mad Men,” Hamm recalled, saying he worked nonstop for 22 days straight. “The weekend was Bridesmaids. Then Monday through Friday on Mad Men. The next weekend was reshoots on The Town and Bridesmaids. And then the following week was Monday through Friday on Mad Men.”
Back then, the actor needed to live up to the expectations that come with starring on what has widely been considered one of the greatest television shows of all time. Such distinction comes with a considerable amount of pressure. Hamm felt all of it.
“I remember going, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this.’ And just remember saying to myself, ‘Just concentrate on today. Look down, look up, okay, Monday’s over. Now that one’s done. Cross it off,’” he told GQ.
The Golden Globe-winning actor has actively gone to therapy over the last two decades, telling the Guardian in 2017, “It’s like going to the dentist. If you can afford it, why wouldn’t you?”
Hamm was initially prompted to seek help from a mental health professional when he was in college. Seeing how he struggled following his father’s death, one of Hamm’s sisters encouraged him to try therapy.
“My sister was like, ‘You need to see somebody. … You’re sleeping till 4 o’clock in the afternoon. … You’re not well,” Hamm told interviewer Graham Bensinger in 2018. “And for me it was like … ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.’ … This is not fine.”
With help from his therapist at the time, Hamm learned how to approach challenging situations from a different perspective. Figuring out how to rewire his way of thinking, he told Bensinger, was revelatory for him.
“She was able to really kind of reorient my kind of way of thinking and she put me on a medication that changed my brain chemistry enough to where [it was like], ‘OK, I’m feeling a little better. I can get up and go to work, I can get up and go to school. I can do my work on time. I can self-motivate again. Sometimes that’s what you need,” Hamm added.
While chatting with Men’s Journal in 2022, Hamm delved deeper into the stigma around seeking mental health attention. The Top Gun: Maverick actor spoke of how keeping that “mind/body duality” sharp informs his line of work.
“As an actor, you have to be aware of your emotions and where you are in the course of a day or in the course of your life,” he told Men’s Journal. “I think keeping that side of your mind/body duality sharp is the same thing as keeping your physical side sharp. There’s a weird stigma about mental health, and there doesn’t need to be.”
These days, Hamm’s mental health is where he’d like it to be.
“Part of 50 is, it’s a good time to check in with [yourself]. I’m a big believer in therapy. I’m in therapy right after this, in fact,” he told GQ. “But there is something about that, contextualizing your life, because if you’re doing it right, you should be in a pretty good place by 50.”
