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Terry Bradshaw open up about depression

16 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this interview excerpt, Terry Bradshaw opens up about his lifelong battle with depression and attention deficit disorder (ADD). He describes how ADD made it difficult to focus in school, leading to repeated reading of paragraphs and a lack of interest in subjects like algebra, trigonometry, and chemistry. Bradshaw explains that his love for football provided a powerful outlet that allowed him to override his attention challenges, noting that activities he enjoyed and excelled at helped mitigate the struggle. He reflects that these patterns persist, citing the need to reread material multiple times even while preparing for a TV show, illustrating the ongoing impact of his mental health conditions.

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Depression is a sickness, man. I, I listen, I don't wish it on anybody because it comes and it's the thief in the night. So you get ADD and you find out, okay, this is why I struggled in school. You can't focus. It's not my fault. It's up here. They don't cross over. Uh-huh. And you're going, okay, But I was good at football. Oh, I loved football. I didn't love algebra. No, not me either. And trigonometry or chemistry, I loved. But what I loved, I was good at. So I could— you could override this, something you love, something that was fun.
Yeah.
But things I had to— things that I wasn't interested in and didn't care was the struggle. And I just could not put my finger on— you ever read a paragraph and then go, what did I just read? Oh
yeah, pages.
Read it again. Read a paragraph again. Did I just do this? And read it again. What's it saying? And then go— Let
me focus. Yeah, that was my whole childhood. Yeah.
And then you go, okay, that was me. You know, I still do that. I'll be on the plane studying for the Fox show and I'll have to reread this stuff 3 or 4 times.
Yeah.