In the summer of 2022, Shawn Mendes was seven shows into his Wonder: The World Tour when he stopped.
He postponed the tour, then canceled the more than eighty remaining dates entirely.
The reason he gave was not an injury or a scheduling conflict.
It was his mental health.
For a pop star at the peak of his commercial success, that kind of public pause was rare.
It also opened up a conversation about what actually happens when the demands of a career outpace a person’s capacity to keep up with them.
A Tour That Stopped Mid Run
Mendes had built years of momentum toward the Wonder tour.
It was tied to a new album, a wave of press, and a packed schedule of arena and stadium dates across North America and Europe.
After the first handful of shows, he made the decision to step back.
He has since described the period leading up to that decision as one where the pressure of performing, combined with the constant demands of touring life, became more than he could manage while staying well.
He did not frame the break as the end of his career.
He said he intended to keep making music and hoped to tour again once he was ready.
That framing mattered.
It separated stepping back from giving up, a distinction that gets lost pretty often in how the public talks about artists who cancel major tours.
What Came After the Break
Mendes spent the next couple of years working at a different pace than his career had followed before.
He released his fifth studio album in November 2024, a project that leaned into a quieter, more folk influenced sound than his earlier pop records.
Rather than jumping straight back into a full arena tour, he booked a run of intimate theater shows in smaller venues, playing to a few thousand people a night instead of tens of thousands.
In 2025 he mounted a new tour, which wrapped that October.
The shows were smaller in scale than the Wonder tour had been, and the schedule was built with more room between dates.
He also made a handful of guest appearances with other artists during this stretch, including onstage moments with Ed Sheeran, Noah Kahan, and Niall Horan.
Those appearances let him stay connected to performing without carrying the full weight of headlining a stadium tour on his own.
In His Own Words
Mendes has talked publicly about anxiety for years, including through his own music, but he has also described specifically what helped him manage it during and after the 2022 break.
He has credited therapy directly, describing it as something that works because it gives a person space to process what is happening rather than just push through it.
He has also talked about a pattern he had to unlearn: closing himself off from the people around him when he was struggling, instead of letting them in.
Learning to do the opposite, opening up to people rather than isolating from them, became a real part of how he manages anxiety now.
Progress does not always mean pushing harder. Sometimes it means learning when to pull back.
What the Research Says About Exercise, Touring, and Anxiety
Mendes has also talked about treating physical training and recovery as connected, not separate, which lines up with a real body of research on exercise and anxiety.
A large meta-meta-analysis, meaning a pooled analysis of multiple existing meta-analyses, looked at the effect of physical activity on depression and anxiety symptoms in non-clinical adult populations.
It found a consistent, moderate benefit of regular physical activity for reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms across a wide range of study designs (Rebar et al., 2015).
That research supports exercise as a genuinely useful tool for managing everyday anxiety.
It is not a replacement for therapy or medical treatment when symptoms are more serious, but it is a real, evidence backed piece of the picture.
At the same time, a touring performer’s schedule is not just about whether exercise happens.
It is also about overall physical and mental load, which is where a different area of research becomes relevant.
Why Rest Became Part of the Plan, Not a Break From It
Athletes and performers who push through exhaustion without real recovery run into a well documented problem in sports medicine called overtraining syndrome.
A widely cited clinical review describes overtraining syndrome as a state that develops when the physical and psychological demands placed on a person consistently outpace their recovery.
Symptoms include persistent fatigue, mood disturbances, and declining performance, and the review notes that the condition can take weeks or months to fully resolve once it develops, which makes prevention far more effective than treatment (Kreher & Schwartz, 2012).
That research was built around athletes, but the underlying mechanism, demand consistently outpacing recovery, applies to any high performance schedule, including touring musicians managing back to back shows, travel, press, and rehearsal.
Mendes has talked about learning to treat rest and recovery as part of his training rather than time stolen from it.
That framing matches what the overtraining research actually recommends: recovery is not optional maintenance, it is part of the work.
What This Evidence Does Not Prove
The research on exercise and anxiety does not show that movement alone fixes clinical anxiety disorders.
The meta-meta-analysis found a moderate benefit across many studies, not a cure, and it was conducted in non-clinical adult populations rather than people with diagnosed anxiety disorders specifically.
For anxiety severe enough to interfere with daily life, the evidence base for therapy and, in some cases, medication is considerably stronger than the evidence for exercise alone.
The overtraining research has its own limits too.
Most of that research comes from athletic populations training for competitive sport, and it describes a physical and psychological syndrome, not a precise, one size fits all formula for how much rest any given touring performer needs.
Mendes’s own account of what helped him, therapy plus a changed approach to rest and connection, is also just one person’s experience.
It lines up with the research directionally, but it is not proof that the same combination would work identically for someone else facing a different kind of pressure.
How This Compares to General Guidance
Most people are not managing a stadium tour, but the same tradeoff shows up in ordinary life.
Work demands, family responsibilities, and a packed schedule can add up the same way tour dates do.
The research on physical activity and anxiety suggests that consistent movement, even in modest amounts, is a legitimate part of managing that load.
It is not a cure all, and it should not replace professional care when anxiety or depression symptoms are significant.
The overtraining research points to a second, related lesson.
A schedule that never includes real rest tends to break down eventually, whether that schedule belongs to a touring artist or someone juggling a demanding job and a full personal life.
Who Should Talk to a Doctor First
Anyone experiencing persistent anxiety, panic symptoms, or low mood that interferes with daily functioning should talk to a doctor or a licensed mental health professional, regardless of how outwardly successful their life or career looks.
People noticing signs of burnout or overtraining, including ongoing fatigue, disrupted sleep, irritability, or a performance decline that does not improve with normal rest, should also consider a medical evaluation, since some of those symptoms can overlap with other health conditions that need to be ruled out.
Anyone using exercise as their main tool for managing anxiety should still check in with a doctor if symptoms are getting worse rather than better, since exercise works best as one part of a larger plan rather than a stand alone treatment.
A Practical Way to Build Rest Into a Demanding Schedule
Mendes’s experience points to a few concrete habits that apply well beyond touring life.
Build recovery into the calendar before the schedule gets full, not after symptoms show up.
Blocking out rest time in advance works better than trying to find it once burnout has already started.
Treat therapy or counseling as routine maintenance, not a last resort.
Mendes has described starting and continuing therapy as an ongoing practice rather than something he only turned to during a crisis.
Use movement as a regular stress management tool, not just a fitness goal.
Even shorter, lower intensity activity has research support for reducing anxiety symptoms over time.
Watch for the early signs of overtraining or burnout: disrupted sleep, persistent low energy, and irritability are common early markers, and catching them early makes the fix much easier.
Build a support system and use it.
Letting other people in during a hard stretch, rather than withdrawing, is one of the specific lessons Mendes has said he had to learn the hard way, and it matches broader research on how chronic stress affects health when it goes unaddressed.
Training or working alongside other people can make that kind of consistency easier to maintain.
References
Rebar, A. L., Stanton, R., Geard, D., Short, C., Duncan, M. J., & Vandelanotte, C. (2015). A meta-meta-analysis of the effect of physical activity on depression and anxiety in non-clinical adult populations. Health Psychology Review, 9(3), 366-378.
Kreher, J. B., & Schwartz, J. B. (2012). Overtraining syndrome: A practical guide. Sports Health, 4(2), 128-138.
This article is for general educational purposes and is not a substitute for personalized medical or mental health advice. Anyone experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression, or burnout should speak with a qualified doctor or mental health professional.
