Ruby Wax HARDtalk

it was mortifying to give evidence. Now it's time HARDtalk.

Welcome to HARDtalk. Mental illness is the invisible scourge of modern

life and it comes with a stigma. To admit to depression or any other

illness of the mind has been to risk being labelled as weak,

self-indulgent or mad. My guess today was to change that. Ruby wax

made her name as a comedian. Depression took her into

neuroscience and psychotherapy. Mental illness raises difficult

questions. Had she finally enters? Ruby wax, welcomed the HARDtalk. You

have made one heck of a career shift from television star to student of

the brain in neuroscience. Does amusing and entertaining people no

longer matter to you? I'm still entertaining them but I am now

talking about the brain. I think people now crave information and

what could be more interesting than the ?3 thing that is sitting on your

head. Brian Cox can study the stars but there is nothing more

fascinating. Now I take it on tour and I explain the journey. Nobody

else. Your admission, if I can put it that way is to try to explain to

people how the brain works and how that can be linked to issues of

mental illness. In an entertaining way. I had a show about mental

illness which I have toured for seven years to various countries and

that was a bit about mental illness. This one is about everybody's brain

because I should tell you how that started. The other one. The other

shows started because comic relief said they they could -- asked of the

could take a photo for me. I thought it would be small but it ended up

being a gigantic spoken -- poster which said it is this woman has

mental illness, please help. I decided that I will make a show and

make it look like it was my publicity poster. You literally

became the poster woman for mental illness. You were mentally ill,

let's get that out of the table now. You suffer all of your life from

sometimes very severe depression. The thing about oppression and why

it has a stigma is that you don't have it all the time. This is why

people think that if it comes and goes, perked up, you can pull out of

it. It is an episodic illness. Luckily, I was not working when I

had it because that would be impossible. People say to me, does

it have anything to do with working in show business? I say one in four.

That is Mr Somalia, that is somebody in a mud hut. That is around the

world. It is not about sadness. It is about a deadness. It is no

movement or feeling, it is like being filled with cement. It is a

disease of the brain. You have talked about the dead shark eyes in

people who have depression. Do you think you can look at people and

know pretty much was sure whether they are suffering from depression.

Completely. That is why when I am with my people. Because we can see

it, we don't have to endlessly say, I am fine when somebody asks you how

you are. We know we are on the dark side. That is how you feel about

people who share this affliction? You don't have to explain endlessly

about why it is so difficult to get up. They know. Teachers should have

photographs of ice in their -- eyes in their office silicon spotted in

children. It is not pubic tea or sadness, it is an illness. You have

ideas about how the public better deal with mental illness and

depression. Before we go into that, I want to take you back as it seems

to me what you have done by writing about it extensively in memoirs and

a book that is specifically about the workings of the brain, what you

have done is examine yourself very closely. I wonder when you look at

your own life from the beginning until now. Do you feel that you

understand yourself and you completely? This is what

neurosciences. There is no self. We're not like a plane crash with a

black box. There are many selves and everything is constantly changing.

That is something that I would like the public to know. That is what

I've learnt at university at Oxford. This mass is changing and we are not

slaves to our genes. The fact that I went to Oxford and I did not

graduate nursery school is more proof of neural plasticity than I

can prove. I was not a bright kid and when you get older and curious,

it is about curiosity rather than saying this is what I am. We love to

label ourselves. I'm a victim or a bruiser. Everything is possible. You

grow more information. That is the idea of the brain is played out

there can be reshaped and moulded is a powerful one. You have stressed

the ability to change and you say that we are not slaves to our genes

but are we to some extent -- some extent slaves to our upbringing and

environment and the way that in the early years our parents raise us. I

have the ablest of madness. You can't top my parents. The Oscar

winners. Why? Hysterical. Bringing the world with them to bring into

our kitchen. Civilised people don't bring St Denis building! She wanted

me to take a shower outside of the House. She and your father escaped

before the Nazis took over Austria and they came to the midwest of the

United States. You are a Midwestern girl but you are living with parents

that never mentioned what went on. I did not know what they played mental

volleyball with me. If they had explained with me. You can say

people are traumatised from the war but they were not really, they got

out early. I have met people from the Holocaust. They say, listen, if

you are saying before you go and you're not traumatised, that will

reflect in your personality after the war. To have both parents, we

used to call them scud missiles because they would shoot over from

America. I tried to get into Europe and my parents try to get out. May

maybe the fearfulness they felt throughout their lives because of

what they knew of what they had its gates -- skate and the loss of

community and homeland, did that fearfulness mean that you never

really felt their approval or affection all of? It could be that

they were very jealous because I was a child of the 60s. Imagine, you are

totally persecuted and then the party starts. I can imagine. My

mother was very beautiful. She lost her heyday. She was running. I can

imagine they were quite envious. I forgive them, for god sake. I know

they were mentally ill and in those days there was no label. They decide

your mother was having a change of life. For 87 years? That are so

important in a sense my understanding of you. You say you

now accept and know your parents were mentally ill. Did they make you

a mentally ill? If you don't have the gene. If it is not expressed,

you can have parents that are hailing from the trees, you won't

get it. If you do have the gene lacking, I am making it simple, and

there is an abusive parental upbringing. I would say, bingo,

chances are big bets on the could happen. Trauma is something else.

Depression certainly happens when it is a combination of upbringing and

nurture and nature. You were a child that was insecure in the US, quite

shy, did not have a whole lot of friends and yet something clicked

with you. You found a way of reaching out to people and becoming

popular. It seemed to revolve around making people laugh. That is a

safety net. I always think that with my background I would have ended up

a comedian or a serial killer. There was not a chance. Because I found

this way of expressing myself I could relieve the poison and also

entertain people because if you whine all of the time people will

turn away. If you are funny, everything is acceptable. That is

why I could do a show about mental illness and I did it for people in

institutions and they accepted because I was honest about mine and

they knew I was one of them. I want to get to reaching out to people who

have mental illness in a moment, I am fascinated by this career that

you got into an made a huge success of which was about comedy. You did

some stand-up and you are in sitcoms and you became a major television

star, doing interviews which were amusing and entertaining. You create

a persona because your first one does not have a chance. Especially

if the parents always say you are sad. Or who will marry you? These

voices were sometimes, either you go under or you put the throttle into

first gear. In the prove everybody wrong, my life was a act of revenge.

You have the job of a rottweiler. Which is great. It also means you

can crash into a wall. None of us know the tipping point. Would you

have been a success if you are a happy person? Lyrup comedians with

perfectly normal backgrounds. It is a rhythm. It is why somebody is a

mathematician. Comedy is about hearing jazz rather than a steady

beat. Didn't have to be unhappy to be a good comedian? It has to do

with rhythm. You don't have to be unhappy. You are unhappy. At 16 I

knew that I would not be prom queen but I knew that comedy would be why

weigh in. I could get all of the attractive boys. That was my

seduction. It worked when I came to England. I was a pathetic actress

but I was funny. Do a funny when you not feeling low. With depression,

when you feel low you are low and when you're okay you are however you

are. You were a driven person. You call yourself a rottweiler. You have

written things that suggest that you will not a nice person at the heart

of your suggesting you have written things like for example, whatever

your success, if I see someone with more than I have, I get the kick in

the stomach, the stabbed in the heart. Envy, Korean security. Note,

envy. The desire to be better and get more. We live in the kind of

society because magazines hold these images, we live with the disease

called entitlement. Now everyone thinks they have a shot. That is why

you have people in the X factor with the talent of a toothpick. Everyone

wants a shot at it. I don't think it was any different for me. Everybody

goes was show business for some reason because you get a lot of

money. I did not have more than anyone else. Over the edge as far as

mental illness? No, in as far as deciding for yourself that while I

have this career, it is actually doing the great damage, I have got

to stop trying to entertain people and make them laugh. I need to

reassess and what you decided to do was go to university and take the

study of the brain very seriously. I want to see what made you change. I

wanted to leave the party before the party left me. There is nothing more

tragic than somebody in show business who is so addicted that

they cling on for dear life and say, please make a documentary about my

gallbladder. You did for a while. I do not want to go through difficult

stuff, but you did for a while. That was my farewell to show business.

You have to go that low before you can get off the heroin of being in

television. So with sharks in a cage with Richard E Grant? It was

humiliating. Some people don't mind eating bugs, or showing their

insides inside of a house. That is when I knew this was going to

happen. This is important, why on earth did Ruby Wax say 'yes' to

Celebrity Shark Bait? Because I was so addicted to being famous, it

becomes an addiction, you don't even have to do anything for a living.

People say one line, you want a cup of tea? You want a lie down? You are

infantilised. You haven't got the muscle to even do a job. You say it

was the lowest of the low. That's not why I left. At a certain age you

had better jump to the next invention of yourself. Unfortunately

we live so long, it just goes on and on and on. I should be dead by now.

You have to do something else to keep the brain going. You

consciously thought you were going to change and reinvent yourself. And

get smart. When I was young, because of the trauma, I couldn't remember

things, so I didn't really read, I was terrible in school, because when

you live with that kind of stress, the first thing to go is the memory.

By the way kids should, teachers should know that when they push

their kids for exams, the first thing that goes down is the memory.

So this was a chance, I now knew I was liberated, I could go back and

fill that void and suddenly become academic. You did. Reading your

book, 'Sane New World', which interestingly has a lot of science,

and you go into some detail about the way the brain works, the

circuitry, the key chemicals. But it's funny. But it is very personal

and it informs about the way the brain works. Going back to the

plasticity and the flexibility of the brain, you seem to be saying

that we all have the capacity to rewire ourselves, to change the way

our brain works. I think a lot of people will be puzzled about how we

could do that. Well, it's very difficult unless you put it in, kind

of, simple, kind of, stick figures. Be as simple as you like because

that works for me. There's a theory that states you come into the world

and you're not hardwired, you don't necessarily have to go out the way

you came in. That your experience and how you think about life

actually changes, first of all, the neuron connections, which actually

are who we are. If I do something over and over again my neurons

connect. If I don't constantly change that I'm at the mercy of

every time this happens I react that way. Some women say all men are

bustards. "I'm always a victim." Yes, sweetheart, you went on a

serial killer website, what did you expect? We have to see how stuck we

are. So you change behaviours by? Becoming aware, watching how you

think, not making a judgement and leaving a gap before you do your

usual trigger or reaction. You start to watch it a little bit. So it

gives you a chance to unwired those heavy habits. I think I'm getting

this. You're saying by being very conscious of the way you respond to

challenges, the way you apply... Without giving yourself a hard time.

You can change the physiology of your brain. People around the world

will be interested in this, you seem to be saying your approach is much

more behavioural and changing the way you see things and think about

things than it is about drugs. I am on drugs. Did you ever use drugs? Of

course, I'm on antidepressants. You are? Of course. It is like saying to

a diabetic, "Are you kidding, you're on insulin?!" It is a disease of the

brain, if it was Alzheimer's, you wouldn't say, "Come on, you can

remember what happened yesterday." You can't even do cognitive therapy

and mindlessness if you're in a depressed state. When people say

exercise, that's ridiculous, you're in a box and you can't move. "When

I'm better I will find something preventative," I will think. The

drugs and the therapies work together? Drugs don't work for

everybody, therapy doesn't work for everybody, I'm putting all my eggs

in... Not all in one basket, something is going to work. Here's a

personal question, you describe the degree to which your parents and

particularly your mother's behaviour did a lot to shape your early mental

development. You've got kids of your own, how have you used what you now

know about the brain and the mind to try to shape your kids in the best

way? I can feel the urge and urges that maybe were passed from my

mother or father, which are quite aggressive, I feel myself even

wanting to strike them and the words they used to say, "How dare you, you

know what I've given you". I can feel it, but because I understand

it's not really me, it's a habit. It worked in the past because of my

aggression making me knock down doors. But when I feel that urge I

don't act on it, thoughts aren't facts. I realise it's a trait. But

if I pull myself back and actually be kind to myself and realise that

it is just a tape recording, you can't whip yourself because then

you're stressed about stress. Do you think you're a good mother? I made

sure my kids never saw me, when they were young, when I was seriously

depressed, I didn't want them frightened. So my husband would say

'mummy is on holiday', or making a documentary, I was lucky. They

didn't have a fear of it. There are people who listen to you and your

missionary efforts to get people to understand depression. And the

brain. And the brain, all of our brains. All of us are suffering now.

I understand that. It is not just people acknowledged as mentally ill,

it is about everyone who one way or another have issues. Negative

voices, the frenzy of not finding any breaks. Your belief that

depression is such a pervasive thing. One in four. One in four, you

said, that has actually frustrated and annoyed some people. Janet

Street Porter. I know Janet. I don't know if you have discussed this with

her, but not so long ago she wrote a powerful piece, not directed at you

personally, but basically she said she is sick of the misery movement.

"How many of these high-profile sufferers of mental illness are

middle-class, highly successful and comfortably off?". 'There's

something slightly repellent about this epidemic of middle-class

breastbeating', she said. By saying that, do you know the highest

suicide is for young men under 30? By putting even more shame on top of

this, and she's from Yorkshire, tell her to knock on somebody's door, it

will be their mother or their cousin, are they breastbeating or

complaining? They're not even coming out of their house because someone

put shame on it. Kids cutting themselves, highest suicide rate

ever. I want to bring this back to you personally. You have spent so

many years thinking about the brain and the way that our minds work and

about how to try to repair minds that aren't functioning well. What

about yourself? After all this talk of living in the moment, the

mindfulness that you try and keep, are you really at peace with

yourself now? No, there is no bliss. There is no phone call from Oprah.

That doesn't exist, it's a fantasy. You can't get to a point where you

can leave your mental illness behind? Your mind will never be

empty, when it is, you're dead. There's all these fallacies about

being in the present, you're not always meant to be in the present.

If you were, you would be a head of lettuce. With all this incoming bad

news and needing to be twerking as well as Miley Cyrus, being

beautiful, where there's an onslaught, we can find our own

breaks. We don't stay in that break, but we have to know our tipping

point. I can't be Bill Gates, I'm not going to kill myself for it. We

have to say, this is where I'm going to rest. When you rest, you've got

more energy to go back in again, a kid shouldn't be up all night

studying, he should pull back for 20 minutes, sit there, eat something

but enjoy it. Listen to music but listen to it. I hope we eventually

go to survival of the wisest rather than survival of the fittest. That's

a nice thought to end on. Ruby Wax, thank you very much for being on

HARDtalk. Thank you. Thank you very much.

As you may well have seen in news headlines, there are a number of

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