by Peter Corser
It is easy to be judgemental about the US star but her outlandish behaviour is evocative of many mental health service users
A quarter of a million people have been displaced in Kenya, Pakistan is on the point of civil war and the US could this year elect a black president. So what has been on the cover of many newspapers? "Britney on horse pills!" and variations on that theme. All showing pictures of a seemingly wild-eyed Britney Spears in restraints being taken into hospital.
The affronted self-righteousness in the above paragraph is essentially phoney. I doubt I would have looked as long at the newspapers at my dad's house if either of the aforementioned three "serious" stories had been on the front cover.
Real problems
What brought me up a bit cold as I dipped my nose in the trough of celebrity tittle-tattle was my dad's assertion that "she will commit suicide soon". Now I suspect that may be a little over the top. But it is true that this is a woman with real problems.
Britney fits some of the criteria for a person at risk of developing mental health problems. She has been exploited by adults for her sexuality most of her early life, she has problems with substance misuse and her lifestyle is chaotic. She also has the stressor of being forcibly denied access to her children.
And all this happens as almost the entire world looks on and judges.
Sympathy drains away
Yet despite this my cup does not overflow with sympathy as perhaps it should. A lot of this is to do with the fact that, in no time at all, Britney will be giving exclusives about "her hospital hell". That is where the sympathy drains away as there is a feeling that she has made a Faustian pact with the media and it is her own damn fault if it bites her in the ass.
Again this is not so different from the clients of all mental health social workers. They carry out behaviour that we know, and in many cases they know, are not helpful to them. We don't blame them for that, so why is Britney a different case?
When the veneer is stripped away celebs are people after all. Anybody who saw the wreck that is Michael Barrymore on Celebrity Big Brother will testify to that. Not that social workers watch that stuff. We are obviously too busy reading The Guardian and watching Peter Greenaway films.
Peter Corser is a social worker in mental health services in the West Midlands
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