Dean Ray joins Sam Neill, Michala Banas and others to share mental health battle in The Show Must Go On doco
Dean Ray shot to stardom five years ago as an X Factor runner-up. The artist now reveals the brutal truth about his battle with mental illness before and after the show.
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DEAN Ray has shared the details of the crippling health crisis which almost destroyed his musical career in a revealing and emotional documentary about mental illness in Australia’s entertainment industry.
Former Home and Away star Ben Steel, who suffers depression, has spent the past three years making The Show Must Go On, with creatives including Sam Neill, Michala Banas, filmmaker Jocelyn Moorhouse - and Ray - contributing their experiences.
Ray was independently pursuing a music career before he was approached to go on X Factor in 2014, becoming the runner-up to teenage winner Marlisa Punzalan.
Cast by the show’s producers as a moody rocker, Ray’s popularity on X Factor led to a recording deal with Sony Music and his debut single Coming Back reaching the top 5 of the ARIA charts.
Five years later at the height of the streaming era, it has more than three million streams.
Ray reveals after a day of back-to-back interviews to promote the single in late 2014, he returned to his hotel room and considered taking his life as the chronic anxiety and depression he had struggled to manage during the series overwhelmed him.
“It was too much for me. That morning I had called my management and told them I really wasn’t well and shouldn’t be doing (a day of promotion),” he said.
“The people around me at the time didn’t understand what it was and how severe it was.
“When I got back to the hotel room that night in Sydney, a panic attack hit me and I wanted to stop it. When you pair anxiety with depression, your mind tells you ‘this is how you fix it’ and I tried to get out of the windows but they were (nailed) shut.
“I fell to the floor and cried like a two-year-old, I couldn’t stop shaking.”
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The artist and his label would later part ways by mutual agreement.
“At the end of the day, I am not an artist that would fit the template they were looking for and I am thankful they agreed to let me go,” he says.
Getting back on his feet has been tough. Ray has just completed a five-week run of shows in Queensland after “digging trench holes and cleaning up brick rubble” for the past two years.
During the tour, he found some fans wanted to talk to him about his mental health battles and share experiences of their own.
After working to manage his health with medication over recent years, the 27-year-old is eager to help others and that motivation prompted him to talk to Steel for the documentary.
He also gave Steel permission to use his song Simple Things, written during his breakdown in 2014, for the show.
“Watching the doco made me feel less alone; the symptoms of this illness can make you feel extremely alone,” he said.
“As bad as it is to experience depression, it is good to see other people having successful careers and manage their mental health.”
The Show Must Go On screens on ABC at 9.35pm on Tuesday.