Sane New World

Ruby Wax is known as an American stand-up comedian who got herself a career in the UK. Partly to her own surprise she became the face in a campaign of people with a mental illness especially in her new country. Since she was outed as a victim of regular and severe depressions, she quit her TV career, got an Oxford degree, did a TED talk and wrote a book.

Sane New World
Ruby Wax

The book is called Sane New World: Taming the Mind and tells the story about how the brain works and how 21st century challenges can cause all kind of troubles in a brain that was evolved for a completely different purpose and hardly equipped for today's stimuli-rich and information overloaded society. And although some fellow human beings seem to cope with that quite reasonably, a staggering 1 in 4 is diagnosed with a form of mental illness.

Ruby Wax is a professional comedian and has a story to tell from the inside out. The humour and the openness about her own situation make the book very readable and even outright funny despite the subject. The in-depth study she made (getting an Oxford degree in the process) gives the topic the substance it deserves. And for those who want every book to have an happy ending, the author describes her success in dealing with depressions through a technique called mindfulness.

I can recommend the book to anyone who interacts with mental patients on a regular basis (and given the ratios, who doesn't?) and to those struggling with depressions in particular. If you can't find the time to read the whole book, there is her TED Talk: "what's so funny about a mental illness?" as a first introduction. I like to conclude with quoting the closing statement from her TED Talk when talking about people with a mental illness: "..can we please stop the stigma?".

ERegoS