John Mayer recently sat down with CBS Mornings to discuss his efforts to support research into veterans’ mental health issues with his non-profit Heart and Armor Foundation.
Mayer has a history of quietly donating to worthy causes and has been engaged in veterans’ issues for over a decade. He was first inspired to get involved during a 2008 visit to Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune.
“It was not set up as a celebrity visit. So, they didn’t know I was coming, but it was the most natural way to meet these veterans, and just immediately start talking and hearing their stories,” he said. “The humanness of it is what struck me.”
In 2019, Mayer used $3 million of his own money to launch Heart and Armor Foundation with the mission to fund studies of mental health problems that affect members of the military including the effect of trauma on women warriors and the biology of PTSD.
“That’s a burden that I think we can help lift off of people,” Mayer said. “Someone saying that the smell of diesel fuel at the gas station triggers a very anxious response because it’s a sense memory from Iraq or Afghanistan. And that got me deeper and deeper into wanting to understand it.”
Heart and Armor has helped publish 25 peer-reviewed studies and continues to fund community outreach to help veterans like former Army Sgt. Aundray Rogers, who struggled with alcoholism, substance abuse, and suicidal thoughts after experiencing trauma in Iraq in 2003.
“After seeing just a lot of bodies, you know, people on fire, cars burning with people in them, in buses. A small-town boy from Mississippi, I wouldn’t have never thought I’d see something like this,” said Rogers, who now volunteers for the foundation. “It means so much, that insurmountable support that they give me to serve. You know, service is my medicine.”
Heart and Armor Foundation recently held an intimate benefit show with Ed Sheeran that raised half a million dollars.
Watch a clip of John Mayer discussing his efforts to help veterans on CBS Mornings below, and to find more information and donate to Heart and Armor foundation, head here.
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