Rick Ness is a tv personality and experienced mining guru who has been involved in the trade for several years now. With over 180 episodes under her belt, Rick is one of the most decorated members on Gold Rush, a reality show that airs on the Discovery Channel.
Ness was first introduced to the show’s audience during the premiere of the third season back in 2012. Nearly a decade on from this and Rick has featured in two other spinoffs, namely, Winter’s Fortune and The Hoffman Story.
Owing to his popularity, Rick’s absence did not go unnoticed when the new season of the show aired.
Rick isn’t in the new season
One notable absence during the new season was Rick Ness. Beforehand, there was a lot of speculation that Rick and his mining crew would not be featured on the show.
Naturally, questions were asked regarding Ness’ whereabouts. Some people even wondered if he’d been involved in accident.
Afterall, mining can be dangerous, particularly when you are working on old, and unstable sites. However, this was not the case this time.
So why did the showrunners decide to limit Rick Ness’ time on the show?
Rick Ness shares mental health issues
Recently, Rick Ness opened about the mental health struggles he had been dealing with over the past year or so. Most of these issues stemmed from the death of his mother.
Rather than deal with all the emotions he was experiencing, Rick chose to distract himself with work, which only made things worse. At the time, he didn’t have a firm grasp of the concept of mental health, which explains why he tried to ignore his issues instead of dealing with them.
Unsurprisingly, everything started bubbling up at random intervals. Because of his experience, Rick has become an advocate of mental health. He took to Facebook to talk about addressing mental health issues head on.
