Comedian and presenter has revealed she has a serious ongoing health condition
TV personality Ruby Wax has never been one to shy away from the spotlight, having made her mark through comedy, acting and presenting – and now she’ll be appearing on I’m a Celebrity in the Australian jungle.
However, the 72-year-old has opened up about a harrowing health battle, revealing how a condition first diagnosed in the 1990s unexpectedly returned after 12 years in remission, forcing her to step back from public life.
The shocking discovery that her illness had come back happened whilst she was overseas, separated from her loved ones, gathering research for a book project she was working on.
In 2022, Ruby embarked on a series of “life-changing journeys” aimed at uncovering life’s deeper meaning for her new book. She wanted to help others find purpose following the pandemic.
Her close friend, the Rev Richard Coles, who came third in last year’s I’m a Celeb, recommended she visit the Christian Brotherhood where he’d trained, but it was during this stay that she fell unwell, reports the Mirror.
Ruby was diagnosed with depression in the 1990s, and for unexplained reasons, it returned whilst she was in what should have been a tranquil sanctuary. “That time [in the monastery] could have been the most pleasurable experience,” she told the Guardian in 2023.
“Maybe it was because I’d got off medication to do the psilocybin [a “potential cure for depression”}. But it can happen when your career is going really well… there is no predictor. Depression is a disease that decides to rear its head – like herpes.”
For the previous dozen years, she’d managed to stay well by practising mindfulness – a subject in which she’s highly qualified. Back in 2013, she earned a master’s degree in mindfulness cognitive therapy, and went on to be made a Visiting Professor in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Surrey, and author several books on the topic, before receiving an OBE for her contributions to the field.
She continues to meditate daily to maintain her sense of peace – something viewers have witnessed her doing with her jungle companions. That’s why it came as such a blow when depression suddenly took hold once more.
“I used to be able to see it {depression} coming and pull back everything,” she explained. “I’d know to cancel, cancel, cancel. I’d go to my room, a safe place where nobody can get me, and where I can see the doorknob – because I have a fear of being locked in. Sometimes I’ve been there for weeks. Instead of having to go to a hospital, I’d wait for the dopamine. Before that, I used to keep working and overriding it, then I’d get really ill. I usually know the tipping point. But this time, I missed it.”
When she recognised she was “spiralling” again, she contacted her psychiatrist, who advised her she needed to return home and be admitted to hospital. This is where the book, whose title was changed to I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was following the incident, begins.
She admits that it certainly wasn’t what was intended. “I began the book trying to find meaning by going on various, life-changing journeys. I ended up in a mental clinic; obviously, things didn’t work out the way I expected. This is the story of what happened after the mental car crash… From then on, the journey had to turn inward,” she writes.
Fortunately, Ruby, who is married to TV and film producer Ed Bye and has three grown-up children, also managed to visit other destinations, such as a refugee camp in Greece, a month-long silent mindfulness retreat in San Francisco and the Dominican Republic, where she swam with whales. However, she understands that her illness is something she will never be able to truly escape from.
Describing depression as: “The black hole of diseases, where you sit helpless as your mind hammers you with accusations. Your thoughts attack like little demons biting chunks out of your brain. It’s hard to stay alive and listen,” she also tragically admits: “I’ve spent a lifetime creating a ‘front’ to give the illusion that all is well. It wasn’t and it isn’t.”
