I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here star Ruby Wax has said the Government needs to invest in mental health research to help curb the current crisis. The 73-year-old funnywoman was speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk as she walked the black carpet ahead of the 2026 British LGBT awards. Ruby has been a vocal advocate for the importance of looking after mental helath for decades but she feels the UK still isn't where it should be on the issue.

"I don't think they [the country and other people] caught up. I think it [mental health] is still in the closet. But hopefully we'll learn from the gay movement and come out. I think we're behind the gay movement as far as shame [around mental health]. There's no shame here," she said, pointing at some of the attendees in the vicinity. Asked what the Government could do to help, without hesitation, she said: "Give money."

She continued: "Give money to do the research on the brain so we can figure out what's mental illness and what's high anxiety.

"And don't give medication to people who are anxious. It's dangerous. If you have a disease be specific. But they hate research," she said.

Unlike many people who spout opinions Ruby has her own first hand experience of the issue. She was awarded an OBE in 2015 for her services to mental health has always spoken plainly about her own problems.

In her 2023 book I'm Not As Well As I Thought I Was she detailed being hospitalised in a psychiatric clinic for six weeks in 2007 with what she called a “tsunami of all depression".

She failed to spot the early warning signs of this depressive episode despite the fact she had spent 12 years in good mental health using mindfulness techniques.

She subsequently presented an online series on mental-health issues for the BBC and her 2010 stand-up show Losing It focused on her experience with clinical depression and her breakdown and recovery.

The star has also studied subjects pertaining to the issue and now uses her training to teach others how to cope.

"I went to Oxford and studied meditation and neuroscience so I teach it now. I use comedy. I'm funny. 'Cos otherwise it is po faced," she laughed.

"But I like the science of what happens in your brain – it's like physical fitness but for this baby up here," she said, pointing to her head.

"So that you are able to focus and not get so burned out and [know] how to read people much better because we don't get distracted.

"I mean I do [get distracted] like everybody but I'm not 100% - sometimes I'm 20% - because I practise it and it's a muscle.

"So I teach it and I have these retreats. I have them in the summer in July or in September or I have them at home. I have 20 people at a time and I teach them."