As comedian Ruby Wax tours the country with a theatre show featuring her experiences of depression, some celebrities stand accused of turning it into a "designer illness."

What do you think about celebrities highlighting their mental health woes? As mass media awareness raising campaigns take hold, Ruby’s not the only one baring her soul.

It’s easy to assume it’s a good thing that these high profile figures – such as Stephen Fry or Alastair Campbell  speak out  (I have always thought so) but for some, it can be a controversial issue, as this post from Psychology Today, highlights: Depression: The New Black?

Here, the writer Anthea Rowe reflects on how genuine celebrities' suffering may or may not be and says revelations about mental illness may be a PR strategy as various high profile figures discuss their depression.

Are people in the entertainment industry publicising - or even exaggerating - their condition in an attempt to sell their latest album, show or fitness DVD?

Perhaps naively, I can't help feeling that if we castigate celebrities for speaking up, we may be creating some sort of pecking order about whose illness we feel we can believe in. With one in four of the UK population reportedly suffering some sort of mental health problem, it can’t be that surprising that some of them happen to be rich and famous. Mental illness doesn’t discriminate and it doesn’t automatically go away if you can afford the trappings of a showbiz lifestyle.

As a journalist who has also 'come clean' about her depression, I have always admired those with far more column inches than me using them to highlight mental health illness. 
 
I once wrote about how depression makes me feel unworthy of my children's love. Should I now question if speaking out is the right thing to do? Will people be waiting in the wings to tell me I have a roof over my head a job so I should get a grip? This may be a simplistic reaction to protestations about the validity of people speaking up, but it’s one that strikes me nevertheless.

Why should one person's suffering be less "worthy" than anyone else's? Depression and grief are no respecters of status or wealth. You could be living the life of an "international playboy" and still be affected - as Robbie has shown.

You could be as acclaimed, loved and high profile as it gets and still feel desperate - just as the writer Elspeth Thompson and designer Alexander McQueen are reported to have been before they took their own lives.
 
In the Psychology Today piece, Anthea writes: "I'm not suggesting for a moment that every single one of these woman fabricated their illness; I'm just saying I don't believe they all suffered the condition in its warts-and-all guise: I think some were just briefly disappointed with life, exhausted by fame. I think some might even have dressed a passing miserable phase up as mental illness in order to buff a fading star?
 
"I vacillate between feeling irked by red carpet treading film stars and globe-trotting-to-tour singers who wheel their experiences of Depression out (a publicity stunt? a means to garner our sympathies so that we will watch their movies, listen to their albums, buy their really, really badly written books? I can't help being suspicious of their recently evolved compulsion to Raise Awareness) ..."
 
Personally, I am not irked by these stories, I am not suspicious. I embrace them: Does it make me naive?

I don't think these stories trivialise depression - just as Jade's cancer led to an upsurge in cervical cancer tests, so mental health charities include famous faces in their campaigns to help boost effectiveness - at a basic level they make my speaking out easier. Or am I hoodwinked by my leanings towards media relations work in recent years?

For me, the bottom line is these people may lead lives that for many would be an absolute dream but  they still get ill and we salute them for speaking out.

Perhaps if we begin to lump all "celebrities" together as possibly flaunting an illness to boost PR, aren’t we going to help create more secrecy and discourage those in the public eye from ‘raising awareness’? – I know how trite ‘raising awareness’ can sound but with hand on heart I do think it matters here.

To be devil’s advocate and take it to the extreme could this mean that that only people who live in grinding poverty are "allowed" to suffer and only their suffering is to be believed?

Why shouldn’t Angelina Jolie have suffered PND? What is to be not believed about an actor from Corrie taking time away from the cameras to recover and then come back and admit what she had gone through to help others?  

Now there's even a more incredible development, some doctors have spoken up to say that people have told them "they want to be bipolar" to emulate or copy their idols. Seriously. This piece from the Daily Mail asks: Is celebrity soul-baring spreading depression?

Yet as depression begins to be discussed as a "designer illness," I do begin to wonder if a day will come when celebrities will speak up about having schizophrenia, psychosis or OCD. Admitting to depression remains easier as it's a much more PR-friendly mental illness.

Perhaps when other mental health issues are highlighted more by those in the public eye, then feelings of depression "being the new black" could subside?

A famous five - quotes about depression:

Frank Bruno:

It's like a kettle. If it's a kettle, you turn the kettle off, you know what I mean? I wish I could put a hole in my head and let the steam come out. The steam was getting so high and the pressure was just getting a little bit much for me.

Jim Carrey:

There are peaks, there are valleys. But they're all kind of carved and smoothed out, and it feels like a low level of despair you live in. Where you're not getting any answers, but you're living OK. And you can smile at the office. You know? But it's a low level of despair. I was on Prozac for a long time. It may have helped me out of a jam for a little bit, but people stay on it forever. I had to get off at a certain point because I realized that, you know, everything's just OK.

Lenny Henry:

That's where depression hits you most - your home life. It doesn't affect your work. I can't do this zany, wacky, funny thing any more. I haven't been like that for a long time.

Sarah Lancashire:

My twenties were a write-off. It's a cruel illness, because you can't see it and you can hide it so well.

JK Rowling:

The thing that made me go for help, was probably my daughter. She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn't right, this can't be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state.

Spike Milligan:

I have got so low that I have asked to be hospitalised and for deep narcosis (sleep). I cannot stand being awake. The pain is too much... Something has happened to me, this vital spark has stopped burning - I go to a dinner table now and I don't say a word, just sit there like a dodo. Normally I am the centre of attention, keeps the conversation going - so that is depressing in itself. It's like another person taking over, very strange. The most important thing I say is 'good evening' and then I go quiet.