The mental health charity Mind has criticised its president, Stephen Fry, for comments suggesting he had no sympathy for child abuse victims’ “self-pity” if it meant restricting free speech.

Fry, who quit Twitter earlier this year after a backlash over a joke he made at the Baftas, was speaking to the US TV show The Rubin Report about campus free speech, safe spaces and trigger warnings on literature.

“In terms of how they think, they can’t bear complexity. The idea that things aren’t easy to understand,” said Fry, who has spoken openly in the past of his own mental illness. “They want to be told, or they want to be able to decide and say, ‘This is good and this is bad,’ and anything that conflicts with that is not to be borne.”

Using child sex abuse as an example, Fry said people who wanted warnings on disturbing texts needed to grow up.

“There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape now is even considered a rape,” he said. “If you say: ‘you can’t watch this play, you can’t watch Titus Andronicus, or you can’t read it in a Shakespeare class, or you can’t read Macbeth because it’s got children being killed in it, it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once, because uncle touched you in a nasty place’, well I’m sorry.

“It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place, you get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.

“Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is we’ll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just grow up.”

After the comments aired, several mental health advocates and charities said they were worried by the comments, including Years and Years singer Olly Alexander.

I feel so sad about Stephen Fry's comments. there's a lot I'd like to discuss but I don't think Twitter is the right place. :-((( — Olly Alexander (@alexander_olly) April 11, 2016

Mind said it wanted to speak to Fry about the comments. “Abuse is incredibly serious and can have devastating consequences for survivors, particularly for their lifelong mental health,” the charity said.

“We understand why some people may have been upset by Stephen Fry’s remarks in a recent American TV interview. Stephen was speaking in a personal context, giving his own views as part of a longer discussion on the subject of freedom of speech. We will be speaking to Stephen to discuss the concerns our supporters have raised.

“As president of Mind, Stephen Fry has done a huge amount to raise awareness and understanding about bipolar disorder and other mental health problems. He has supported Mind in our campaigning activities over the last decade and has helped enormously to change public attitudes in the UK about mental health for the better.”

• The headline on this article was modified on 13 April 2016. Previously, the quote marks had appeared around ‘grow up’ rather than ‘self-pitying’