How a pro skier and ultra-marathoner wrestled with his mental health – and how to help your kids with theirs
- Colleen Cronin
- Sep 14
- 10 min read
Updated: Sep 19
Growing up in a mountain town in Colorado, Drew Petersen had a clear, singular dream: becoming a pro skier. His parents put him on his first pair of skis at age one and a half. By 15, he was on a fast track to stardom, winning competitions, getting sponsorships, and, ultimately, starring in and making movies.
While Drew loves nothing more than to shred a steep, gnarly mountain face, his ascent to skier stardom did not bring the happiness he expected. And it did not resolve the inner turmoil he’d lived with from the young age of 9. It took several ski accidents, an unhealthy relationship with partying, finding an off-season passion (long-distance running) and staring death straight in the face for Drew to completely rebuild the entire foundation of his life.
Today, Drew is on a mission to use his humor, his authenticity and his adventurous spirit to break open conversations about mental health and change the culture around mental health – for both kids and adults. And he’s coming to Boise, Idaho (a state that had the 4th highest youth suicide rate in the country in 2023) to:
Address Boise State athletes and students at the Stueckle Sky Center on Monday, September 22 at 6 p.m.
Share his story with teens at four Boise high schools (Capital, Boise, Timberline, Borah) during the week of September 22-26.
Present his film “Feel It All” and host a Q&A with the wider community (everyone 12+ welcome but viewer discretion advised due to explicit language and challenging themes including suicide) at Boise’s Egyptian Theatre on Thursday, September 25 at 7 p.m.
“Skiing and running could not be a replacement for emotional stability. So I had to renovate my life to build a more holistic relationship with these two sports so they didn’t dominate or define my whole identity.”
Q: What was your earliest memory of experiencing some kind of mental instability?
The earliest memory I have of suicidal thoughts is when I was 9 years old.
But I didn’t have any language or understanding about mental health at that age. And I was living in a culture where the words “mental health” weren’t used, and didn’t exist in my lexicon or my community. So when I was struggling as a kid, I just got really good at hiding it. And when there were cracks that people would see through, it got explained away as “just being a kid” or “just being a teen.” So I didn’t really understand what was going on. And I also didn’t seek professional help until I was an adult.
In 2017, I had a near-death accident in the mountains, where I literally looked death in the eye. And I spiraled into PTSD and suicidal thinking. Eventually, in 2018, I got to a point where I was either going to kill myself or ask for help. And that’s when I fortunately chose to ask for help. I thought I was just dealing with PTSD from the accident, which I was, but getting professional counseling also led to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. It also came in the form of brain rehab for the effects of several brain injuries I’d suffered from skiing.
And so through that process, and really through a lot of desperation and pain, I’ve renovated every aspect of my life – and I’m 5 and a half years sober. I rebuilt everything so that I could have the tools to take care of myself, including:
Continuing talk therapy
Psychiatric medication, and keeping up with my care team
Consistent, healthy clean living: prioritizing sleep, daily mindfulness meditation, journaling
Having a gratitude practice
Tapping into my creativity
Building deep social connections
Physical movement and exercise through skiing and running
“I had to accept that navigating my mental health and living with bipolar disease is a lifelong reality for me. And it’s something that I really embrace now, and I find a lot of beauty in it. And that’s something I really hope people take away from my films.”
Q: What happens when you go into schools and share your raw, vulnerable self with teens?
I’m super fortunate to be able to connect with a lot of different communities and a lot of different people. But my favorite groups to connect with are definitely the kids.
One of the reasons I committed to doing this work is that when I was a kid, pro skiers were my heroes and role models. And if just one of those pro skiers had talked about depression or suicide, I think my entire life would be different. I would not have felt so alone for so long.
Whenever I talk to kids, I’m never surprised by how common mental health struggles are, but I’m always shocked and impressed, because kids ask the best questions. They’re always the most open and most vulnerable. Kids have this innate vulnerability and courage in them that we need to honor, foster, and support.
The strength that kids have to share themselves with me is the greatest strength that I’ve ever seen, anywhere in the world. It takes courage for kids to share with me if they’ve had suicidal thoughts – or if someone they know has, or someone in their family has died by suicide. And it takes courage to share how they’ve navigated that with their classmates or asked each other for support.
Parents need to know that kids are already having these conversations all across America, and they’re more capable of having them than a lot of adults. And we owe it to them to respect and honor that – and also to create the spaces and support for them to have these conversations safely.
When I go into schools to connect with kids, it’s very clear to me that kids are very hungry for ways to help those around them, to help shift the culture of their communities.
Q: Why will it take the ENTIRE community to change the culture of mental health?
We’re all a fabric of our community. And we’re all influences and components who are shaping and shifting the culture. Culture isn’t just something that’s hundreds of years old and is in a history textbook. Culture is how we show up every single day. It’s how we treat each other – and look each other in the eyes during a conversation. And it takes role models to help shift that for the younger generation.
And while the younger generation gives me the most hope of building a culture that prioritizes and honors mental health, it’s on those of us who are in positions of power, security and influence to build the space for that culture to exist in the future for them. It’s not just on the kids. It’s not just on the parents. It takes all of us.
Especially in Western culture, there’s the “achievement ladder." We base a lot of our self-worth off external validation and accomplishment. What I’ve learned is that we live in a false narrative of an “arrival fallacy” that says, “Once I achieve this or go pro, or I’m in that movie, then I’ll be happy.”
But ... external validation is never the solution to internal turmoil.
I don’t believe in a happy life. I believe in a content life. It requires a commitment to the process, not just the goals and outcomes. It also requires looking inwards a lot more than outwards. And shifting that culture has to come from living that way day-to-day.
Q: What’s the importance of role modeling in terms of raising resilient kids?
I’m not a parent, but I get feedback from kids consistently through my work. And I think that kids are really good at detecting dissonance and hypocrisy. Oftentimes, the message they’re getting from parents is “Do as I say, not as I do.” That can be something like taking care of your mental health, going to therapy or considering medication.
But it can also be things like our relationships with digital technology. Kids often tell me that they’re not allowed to be on their phones at night, but then watch their parents hold themselves to a different standard.
It sounds simple, but we adults have to start with ourselves. We have to be able to take care of ourselves to take care of other people.
Q: How can we prioritize mental health more?
The solution starts with talking about it. That’s really at the core of where everything has to be on a societal level, community level, and an individual level. It really does have to start with saying things out loud. Conversation is how we access those parts of our brains, and our experiences, in a different way. Talking about it also means that we’re with someone else.
Conversation is the antidote to isolation, depression, feeling terminally unique, feeling alone. And that connection can only come from one-on-one conversations or in-person experiences. Humans are innately social beings, so connection is just essential.
Q: What are a few things parents can do to help support their kids’ mental health?
There are a few things parents can do.
Number one is listen. You have to listen more than you talk. Get comfortable with silence and foster that space for silence because that’s when your kids are going to be able to step into a space to talk more.
Number two is speak directly, ask directly. You need to respect that your kids are capable of these difficult conversations. And research proves that asking about suicide does not put the idea in a kid’s mind. We now have an evidenced-based suicide protocol called QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) that starts with the question: Are you thinking about suicide? And if the answer is anything but “no,” we need to be able to understand what that answer is, assess their safety, and support them in next steps.
Learn more about how current suicide prevention messaging is broken and stay tuned for information about how to become QPR trained or parenting workshops focused on decreasing pressure in sports and academics by signing up for You.Me.We.All’s newsletter.
Number three is to create space for vulnerability. Be honest with your kids about your own mental health and model the tools to help nurture it. It doesn't have to be that you’ve had suicidal thoughts. It doesn’t have to be that you have a mental health diagnosis. It just has to be real. Be as authentic and real as you can. Because if we create that space for kids, they’re going to be real.
That’s part of the culture I want to help create – a culture where people can be more of themselves, more of the time.
Q: How do you see the intersection between social media, smartphones and mental health?
From a public health perspective, there are mixed opinions. But I don’t think we need that consensus to say that social media and smartphones are one of the largest contributing factors to the mental illness and suicide epidemic among teens in the U.S. And I also think that the relationship with digital technology is also one of the driving factors in the mental health struggles of adults. This isn’t just about teenagers. It’s just easier to keep these conversations more narrowly focused on teenagers, because it’s easier to collect data sets with controlled variables for that age group.
I have major qualms with social media, but ultimately, I’ve decided that staying on these platforms is better than totally getting off them, because I can be a piece of someone’s digital diet that is a little more real, a little better, and a little more honest.
But for kids, I think it’s really hard for them to understand their own relationships in terms of what they’re putting out as their public image, whether that’s online, or just how they show up for a day at school. And they really need more consistency in their relationships and places that have real depth and nuance.
That’s the piece that’s often lost in the digital modern age – nuance. And nuance primarily comes from in-person, social interaction. You can also seek it out from books or watching films – those definitely provide more nuance than watching videos on TikTok.
Q: Should parents bring their teens to your evening film screening event?
Hell yeah! It’s important to be in that same space together, which can then offer the space to have those conversations afterwards. And if your kid goes to one of the schools I’ll be visiting in Boise during the day on September 25th, that’s all the more reason to go. What I’ll do and say at the evening event will be similar – but also totally different.
So if your teen is willing to go to both, it’s a sign that they want to be having more of these types of conversations. And in-person events always have more impact than watching a film at home on your own. Kids get to feel that they are surrounded by so many other people in the community who care – not just their parents. And they can go, “OK, I’m not alone in this. This is normal.”
Q: What do you wish your parents or your community would have done when you were that scared, 9-year-old having suicidal thoughts?
I wish somebody would have asked me directly: Are you thinking about suicide? Because those five words have the power to save a life, to change a life and to help someone avoid limitless years of pain. If someone had asked me that then, it could have saved me a couple of decades of pain. It’s just the discomfort of asking the question.
In terms of supporting others, I always encourage people to show and keep showing up and following up. It can’t be a one time thing.
If I could go back and say something to that younger self, that nine-year-old boy, I'd say: “You are worthy and deserving of help, love and understanding. And there’s no qualifier necessary for those things, other than the fact that you're a human being and you're alive on this planet.”
That’s something I’m still learning and trying to believe. It’s a hell of a lot harder than if I’d been learning it the whole time.
Help us spread the word about Drew coming to Boise and bring more people into the movement to ... change our culture around mental health!
Resources to learn more
Drew-Petersen.com: Find out more about Drew’s passions (burritos!), adventures and creative projects.
What Samia and James McCall want every parent to know about youth suicide: Read You.Me.We.All’s Q&A interview with this Boise family whose 14-year-old daughter died by suicide.
Upstream suicide prevention: Find out more about the work You.Me.We.All has been doing to promote more upstream suicide prevention in our schools.
The Speedy Foundation: Learn how this sponsor of “Feel It All” by Drew Petersen is helping prevent suicide and elevate mental health action.
Connection is the Cure: Learn how this sponsor of “Feel It All” by Drew Petersen is normalizing and encouraging ongoing conversations about mental health, addiction recovery and suicide prevention in homes, schools and communities.
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