“How are you doing?” comic and scene-stealer Michelle Buteau asked Neal Brennan.

“Clinically depressed but not bad,” Hollywood’s Secret Comic Whisperer responded, with the kind of tossed-off nonchalance that suggests this is a joke but also not a joke.

It’s hard to imagine a more natural kickoff for the star-studded panel “Comedy and Mental Health: A Hilarious Conversation.”The event took place over the weekend at Comedy Central’s Clusterfest, which sounds not so much like a three-day comedy festival as what an oncologist privately calls a clump of polyps. Comedy Central partnered with Mental Health First Aid, part of the National Council for Behavioral Health, to address mental health in the comedy community (and beyond!) during the festival. As tired as the sad clown trope has become—“but doctor, I am Pagliacci”—it still holds truth. The people whose jobs consist of making other people laugh all too often have tangled with depression. Earlier this year, for instance, beloved comic Brody Stevens joined an unfortunately growing list of comedians whose depression led them to take their own lives. This panel provided an opportunity for comedians to not only open up about the mental health risks endemic to their own lives, but to translate them in a universal way.

Read on: Comedy Central’s Clusterfest tackled mental health this year