Debby Ryan Describes the Brain Injury That Split Her Life in Two

• Debby Ryan said she had a “life-altering brain injury” a few years ago and spent six months out of work and in neurological rehab.
• It was her fifth concussion, and she described it as “sustained shaking over a minute of time” without saying what caused it.
• She said some of what she lost never came back, and that migraines she already had got significantly worse.

Debby Ryan said she suffered a brain injury that split her life into what she called “pre-incident Debby and post-incident Debby.” The actor described it on the Sept. 15 episode of the YouTube food show Last Meals, where host Josh Scherer asked her about eating and the senses.

“I had a pretty crazy life-altering brain injury a few years ago and I was out of commission for like six months, and I went to this neurological rehab for like six months,” she said. It was the fifth concussion of her life.

What happened to Debby Ryan?

Ryan, 33, said the first four concussions each came from what she called “an incident.” The fifth, she said, was different: “sustained shaking over um like a minute of time.”

She did not say what caused any of them, who else was involved, or when they happened beyond “a few years ago.” No police report, medical record or statement from a representative has been made public.

After rehab failed to fix it, she said she tried what she called a “fringe science treatment” — “really sci-fi and crazy” — more than once. “It kind of got me back online,” she said. “But there are some things that just did not come back.”

What does a brain injury like that actually do?

A concussion is a brain injury caused by the head or body being moved hard enough that the brain shifts inside the skull. It does not require a blow to the head, and it does not show up on a standard CT scan, which is why the diagnosis rests on symptoms rather than an image.

Repeat concussions are the part clinicians watch. Each one lowers the threshold for the next and lengthens recovery, and a minority of patients are left with symptoms that persist for months or years — light and noise sensitivity, headache, trouble processing visual information.

Neurological rehab is the standard answer: supervised, graded exercises that retrain balance, eye tracking and tolerance for stimulation, rather than the rest-in-a-dark-room advice that used to be the default.

Why does Debby Ryan talk about migraines?

Ryan called herself “a migraine warrior” and said the condition predated the injury, which then made it worse. “Quite often the world is really loud. It’s really too bright,” she said, adding that people are “way too casual” about migraine “because it’s hellish.”

One lasting effect she described is visual: she can often see and think better with her eyes shut. “The visual data that I’m taking in can be so distracting and so loud,” she said, “and then with the migraines, which were significantly worsened by that, it sort of is too much.”

She credited the people around her with carrying her through it — a team who “reminded me who I am and was” and “held a lot of space for that to change potentially permanently.” Ryan married Twenty One Pilots drummer Josh Dun on Dec. 31, 2019; their son, Felix Winter, was born in December 2025.

What is Debby Ryan known for?

Ryan starred as the title character on the Disney Channel series Jessie from 2011 to 2015, after joining the network as a teenager on The Suite Life on Deck. She later played Patty Bladell on the Netflix series Insatiable.

More on her is on her FameCrumbs page, and the latest is in our Celebrities section and our Movies & TV section. Another actor who grew up on camera, Millie Bobby Brown, added a second child by adoption this week.

— Bruno Monteiro

Sources: Debby Ryan’s own account on Last Meals, hosted by Josh Scherer, published Sept. 15, 2026 (quotes transcribed from the episode). Variety (Zack Sharf); E! News; Parade. Photos: frames from the Last Meals episode, Mythical Kitchen.