How Neuroplasticity Could Help with Depression, with Ruby Wax

Comedian Ruby Wax discusses her journey that led her to learn about neuroplasticity and how it relates to mental illness.
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Transcript: About eight years ago in the U.K. I was outed by a mental health charity because they asked me if they could take a photo of me to raise money in one of their little, you know, pamphlets. And I said yeah and I thought it was going to be a tiny fingernail clipping of a picture but they were huge posters all over the U.K. – gigantic. And I looked like a Lithuanian peasant and it said on it – I don’t know who wrote this – one in four people have mental illness, one if five people have dandruff. I have both. I mean, you know, mortified. So I thought you know what I’m going to do. I’m going to write a show and I’m going to make that look like it’s my publicity poster.
So I did write a show and I did it in mental institutions for the first two years. And I think they liked it. Well I couldn’t tell because they weren’t always facing me. And then I made a joke. I said the bipolars used to say I laughed, I cry. And really if you can make a psychotic laugh you’re halfway to Broadway. What happened was then we would have – I would do my show. Then we’d have a little bit of a lunch break and we used to steal food from the anorexics because they didn’t mind. And then we’d come back. We’d have a discussion, fabulous discussions – I won’t even go into their questions.
Oh, P.S., I wasn’t talking down to them because they knew I was of the tribe, okay. So you know how people go, “How’d you do that?” I was one of them. So then the show took off and I did it in all theaters. In Australia, in Capetown, in London. Everywhere I did the show and the audience would ask me the same questions and it became a kind of – even for a thousand people one guy would stand up and he’d say, you know a real butch guy – I’ve been on antidepressants for 20 years. I’ve never told my wife and she was sitting next to him. And it was like the Muppets in there like people would be beside themselves, you know, where do I go? How do I get help? And sometimes it was heavy, you know. One woman said I have cancer and depression and I said, “Well, which is worse?” And she said well with the cancer all I wanted to do was live and with the depression I just wanted to die. Other people were quite funny. So this became a walk in center. And on my days off I would use it as a walk in center and I’d bring in doctors and neuroscientists and invite people off the street and have a whole army of therapists so they could get help, bully for me. You know we needed a kind of AA, have it so organized. And this is like, you know, how did they get it together? They’re drunks. [TRANSCRIPT TRUNCATED]
Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler, Elizabeth Rodd, and Dillon Fitton