Airdate: Ruby Wax’s Mad Confessions

ABC2 has a new documentary featuring Ruby Wax, but not talking focussed on her comedy but her battle with mental illness.

Audiences remember Ruby Wax as the larger-than-life comedian. Now her career has taken a different turn: ‘I’ve become the poster girl for mental health,’ she says.

Building on the success of her stage show, during which the audience is encouraged to speak openly about their own experiences, Ruby tells her own story of grappling with mental illness, and encourages people with similar issues to ‘come out’.

In this award-winning documentary, Ruby campaigns to break down the stigma that still surrounds mental illness. Wanting to support people who choose to stand up and be honest about their condition, Ruby follows three successful businesspeople as they disclose their mental illness to their employers and, in some cases, their friends.

Ruby also takes her cause to the House of Commons to find out the current state of the law, and meets the MPs who recently spoke openly for the first time about their mental health conditions during a parliamentary debate.

Ruby’s lively celebrity interviews are well known, but this documentary casts the straight-talking actress and comedian in a new light, as she shares her own vulnerabilities with humour and warmth, while mentoring and empowering people to open up about their mental illnesses.

Ruby Wax’s Mad Confessions Wednesday July 24 at 9.20pm ABC2.