Ruby Wax Quotes

You have to hide what you are and it's really stressful and very bad for your self esteem. Because it's not obvious to people that you are ill, they treat you as if you're a pain in the ass, then you beat yourself up and you are already beating yourself up as a part of mental illness.

My manic depression was ravaging my life, but because nobody could see it, many people thought it was a figment of my imagination.

Sadness is a super important thing not to be ashamed about but to include in our lives. One of the bigger problems with sadness or depression is there's so much shame around it. If you have it you're a failure. You are felt as being very unattractive.

I know what it's like to feel marginalized and defeated and humiliated by suffering from a mental illness.

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.

Depression is very bad illness. This will be the toughest fight of my life.

I think that now most people know someone in their family that is coping with something, but there is still a tremendous amount of shame - that one is still regarded as a defective unit ... if only they would pull up their bootstraps - they are only indulging their emotions, everybody's moody, blah, blah, blah.

I was copeless. Not just hopeless, but copeless. I tried to keep on working because I was ashamed of acknowledging the fact that I was depressed. You don't use that word.

I hated myself for so many reasons, and I thought so many things were my fault that happened to me growing up.

I would be going until I went over the bounds of reality and was then caught up in a profound wish to be dead without having to go through the shaming defeat of suicide.

Unfortunately, I think depression and anxiety are really hard to live with. And what people don't need is to feel bad about themselves because they decide to go on medication.

Mental illnesses are so frightening and there's so much ignorance about them that I think it comforts people to think, 'Oh, well, it happens to these people because they deserve it.'

Getting to have an opportunity to tell a story that is about mental illness and how it affects one's self and one's community was really something that really meant a lot to me.

You never really shake depression and that's a tough road you have to deal with.

You know, you become crazy. I had done a story for '60 Minutes' on depression previously, but I had no idea that I was now experiencing it. Finally, I collapsed and just went to bed.

The guilt I felt for having a mental illness was horrible. I prayed for a broken bone that would heal in six weeks. But that never happened. I was cursed with an illness that nobody could see and nobody knew much about.

Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.

So many people have really wanted to die. They seem ashamed to say so. I think it would help if they would say so.

I didn't want to be the daughter of the crazy people.

I actually found it very moving how destructive depression is. I was really saddened by this burden people have to handle.

I believe that everyone experiences depression to some degree at some time in their lives. And there are probably millions of people who live with a low level of sadness and heaviness day in and day out.

Depression is so exhausting - it takes up so much of your time and energy - and silence about it, it really does make the depression worse.

I don't think of depression as contagious. Other depressed people challenge the idea - which can be very persistent and irritating - that there is something odd about you: that you are unique with regard to this wretched state.

I have a great life, amazing family and friends, so it's easy for people to be like, 'What have you got to be sad about?' But it's not that; it's a chemical imbalance in your brain that sometimes needs to be treated.

I never thought I'd be somebody dealing with anxiety or depression.