To celebrate the opening of the fantastic new health facilities at Blackheath Lane’s Centre of Excellence, Staffordshire University invited comedian, author and mental health activist Ruby Wax to share her experience and tour the site.
Ruby’s talk at Blackheath Lane was an impassioned, personal and frank observation of the struggles and treatment of mental health, defined by her brilliant, cutting humour.
The room, which hosted such university big-wigs as vice-chancellor Liz Barnes and Dean for the Faculty of Health Sciences Dr Nigel Thomas, listened on as she spoke about her own time with depression and opinions on the matter: “Why can every organ in the body get sick and you get sympathy cards, except the brain?”
Some time after the presentation we managed to grab a minute to talk to Ruby:
We recently took a vote among our students and found that their number one priority is mental health. Having spent time around young university students at UCL and Oxford, why do you think this is?
I think the students would understand the pressure. You’ve not got a huge chance of any other illness at this early point of your life, but mental illness could always affect you. So, yeah, I understand.
What do you think of the facilities for mental health that are available today?
Unfortunately, there’s not enough centres where they can find a point of reference and good luck finding a good therapist! Pretty much everything is wrong!
You’ve said previously that people wouldn’t discuss the c-word, cancer, in the past, but now it’s the m-word. Do you think this is changing?
I think individuals are changing, but as a group we’re still isolated, but I have more and more people coming up to me and saying: “Guess what? I have bipolar”, and I’m so happy to meet them, because it’s a meeting of like-minds.