Britney Spears’s new role as poster girl for mental illness may be preposterous, but her escalating self-destruction sure looks like the real thing.
And I’m not alone in feeling a certain thrill at the spectacle. A multibillion-dollar gossip economy has sprung up to satisfy the cravings of a global audience for stories like Britney’s. There’s something fascinating in her boundless defiance of court orders, social norms, reason, all the restraints by which the rest of us live. She’s on an epic tear of rage and hatred.
On Jan. 3, when she was strapped to a gurney and locked up on a psychiatric ward as a danger to herself and others, the media and the blogosphere began asking, Is she mentally ill? Then on Jan. 31 it all happened again.
Experts have been called upon for a diagnosis and prognosis: Is Spears bipolar or borderline? Where does the self-medication end and the chemical imbalance begin?
For those of us who want to see her go further, faster, higher, Spears did not disappoint. She snubbed Dr. Phil (Phil McGraw), who then was shamed into canceling his program about her. Upon her release she reportedly hit the road with her stud of the moment, a hot Anglo Afghan who is, perversely, a celebrity photographer.
This detail raised a new line of questions for some of the more sophisticated gossip traffickers: Can her slow-motion crash and burn be explained as some monster need for attention? Is she as addicted to us as we are to her?
And this speculation, in turn, led both snarky and earnest commentators to suggest that we boycott Spears. Above her trashy family and many other hangers-on, we the public are her worst enabler.
By comparison the mysterious and sudden death of Heath Ledger on Jan. 22 was an event of high seriousness and great dignity. It also knocked Britney Spears off the covers.
But very soon our girl was back in all her squalor. According to some reports the story had even advanced to the point of a possible mental-health intervention by her family.
Although that’s not a development welcomed by perverse voyeurs like me, if by some miracle she does ask for help, there’s no end to the treatment available to her. And in that regard, she makes a very unconvincing icon of the mentally ill.
Real crazy people, of course, don’t suffer the way celebrities do. In the first place, rather than being the focus of intense media attention, mental illness is mostly ignored as a serious public-health problem. Society manages to both stigmatize and trivialize it at the same time.
Many people with depression, bipolar disorder, even schizophrenia, lead highly productive “normal” lives once they are diagnosed, on medication, and in treatment. Yet the caps on private health insurance coverage for these conditions are so limited and discriminatory that they discourage accessing treatment above and beyond basic meds. State-run facilities are often a scandal. For middle-income people the obstacle to getting well is more likely one of money than motivation.
The more you examine the way we deal with mental illness, the crazier it looks.
As many as half of all people with mental illness go undiagnosed and untreated until they’re homeless, violent, or otherwise in crisis. One problem is that our laws about involuntary treatment permit people with mental illness to be hospitalized against their will only when they are a significant danger to themselves or others. Although intended to protect the rights of the mentally ill, these laws generally prevent intervention until it’s too late.
That’s why an estimated 16% of the some 2.2 million people in America’s prisons are identified as mentally ill. The cost of keeping a person behind bars for a year is somewhere around $25,000. Think how much psychotherapy that would pay for.
So IMHO the idea that the upside to Spears’s downfall is the higher profile of mental illness is just an excuse for staying tuned. And I, for one, am getting bored. Unless she comes up with some major diagnosis like multiple personality, I doubt that I’ll see her story through.
I’d like to think it’s because I don’t want to be her enabler, but the real reason is that the thrill is gone, especially if she starts getting well.
Comments (6)
Multiple personality disorder (new name Dissociative Identity Disorder) is not a major diagnosis IMO. It is highly treatable and has an excellent prognosis. Being DID does not usually mean you are going to act out in outrageous ways. They whole point of it is to hide and disguise severe pain. Why act out and advertise it then? Hollywood has, as usual, a very twisted idea of this diagnosis.
Hi there !!
I agree with Julie. Why dont she come out with it???
She has the chance to be a mental illness activist and also throw some funding to the Mental Health Resource Foundation. She could be a Hero instead of a coward. She needs to come out with and be a role model.
If a celebrity suffers, (unfortunately), from some sort of mental disorder he/she is in the best position to create awareness about the devastating effects of a mental disorder. Gossip aside, these unfortunate publicity stunts serve a purpose: To create awarenes that mental illness is more widespread in our society than society itself is willing to admit. This by itself is a major leap.
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