Is Britney headed for a tragedy because she's a celebrity? Would any ordinary person with major mental issues have been released from a respected psychiatric facility just six days after they were committed by a court order?
Britney's exasperated parents are terrified. "We believe her [Brit's] life is presently at risk," they said in a statement that also pointed out that their daughter was released over the recommendation of her treating psychiatrist.
Shrinks that I talked to are also aghast at this new turn in the Britney saga. "I'm appalled that they let her go" Dr. Carole Lieberman told me. "As a psychiatrist, I know that there is no way that she could have been stabilized in six days. Nonetheless, her celebrity status does seem to have gotten her "special" treatment — that is now putting her life in danger." Let me point out that Dr. Lieberman actually happens to be a member of the clinical faculty of psychology at UCLA Medical Center where Britney was actually treated, and she still feels this way.
"It's an outrage. I would love to know who made that medical decision. It's one of the worst things that could happen to her," clinical psychologist Dr. Judy Kurianski tells me.
"Any patient of mine who drank and drove repeatedly and who had been hospitalized involuntarily twice within weeks and who had extreme stressors, like the loss of custody of one's children, would not be leaving my hospital in six days, if I could help it," adds Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and author of Living the Truth.
What should have happened to Britney according to all these experts:
She needed to have been held in the hospital for a minimum of 30 days, just to clear her body of all the alcohol and drugs — prescription or otherwise — that she may have been imbibing. Apparently it would have taken that long for her brain chemistry to even return to "normal" so the pros could actually evaluate what real mental illness she might have.
And Britney was in wicked bad shape when she arrived at the hospital — throwing such wild tantrums she had to be restrained in a padded room, according to Star magazine.
The popwreck admitted at the hospital that she had been taking Adderall, a drug which gives you a high and curbs appetite, and Star reported she was even taking prescription thyroid medications also to lose weight, plus Prozac and who knows what else. Apparently, certain drug combos can actually cause behavior that mimics mania.
Britney may not be bipolar after all, she just may have taken such a mix of dangerous substances for such a long time that they basically made her do crazy things.
But Brit will never know now, nor will her parents or even her psychiatrist. There's a good possibility that because she's a star, and a star who was probably a disruptive pain in the butt at the hospital, that she's now back driving the streets of LA with her paparazzo boyfriend and pack of paparazzi behind her.
It's a huge loss for Britney since psychiatric disorders are so treatable, according to Dr. Ablow. He stressed to me that he doesn't treat Brit but he's not hopeful for her now:
"If she has deep feelings about being controlled and manipulated in life by the people who are then made your financial conservators (like dad Jamie Spears) she may feel like she can't escape from the cage. If you feel these people have never respected you as a person, you may also feel you have no life of your own. When people have been denied their own hopes and dreams, they lose faith that they will ever be free to live as they want and they give up."
In other words, message to Jamie and Lynne Spears: If you love your daughter, now get two "neutral" conservators, and since a hospital won't hold her, see if you can get a 100% Britney sympathetic psychiatrist/babysitter who can treat her.
What else can you do?
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So we feel badly for Brittany and her children. But the truth is, she is free to destroy her life if she chooses. Can she "choose" if she is incapacitated by drugs or alcohol or mental illness? That's a heavy philosophical question that most of us don't get asked, because we wear underwear and don't shave our heads. Usually.
What to do? I recommend two things. The first is, if you actually do care about Brittany, then refuse to buy any magazine with her on the cover. Take a minute and send the publisher a postcard, telling them of your decision. Enough people do that and the paparazzi will move on to some other victim. Who knows how her behavior will change without the stress/allure of the cameras?
Secondly, hold her accountable for her actions. You can't have it two ways: if you want the rights of a fully capable adult citizen, then you have the responsibility. Arrest her ass the very second she's caught driving while intoxicated or doing anything else to endanger the lives of others. Arrest her when she steals stuff from stores. Treat her like the rest of us. THEN we'll see what happens.
But then again, I think Britney's true problems stem from unchecked bipolar disorder. Until and unless she addresses that issue, she'll go down in flames.
I read that Kfed is all of the sudden being nice and will let Brit's mother take the kids to see Brit. Where was his kindness when Brit needed it? When Brit just wanted joint custody Kfed said no he wanted it all, and I bet he was counting on Brit losing it, but not to the point where she now has a guardian of her own.
Kfed and Kaplan have to back up now because their dealing with Daddy Spears directly now.
Who knows, maybe Kfed will have to get a job.
In the video Brit does her Zombie dance moves along with many clips of the paparazzi "harrassing" her.
Brit loves to dance in front of the camera - I think that's all this is about. It's her life and focus. Why are people talking about anything else?
All of the above is to suggest that I am not unaware of the dangers to someone in her condition and situation. That does not mean that I agree with your position.
People with mental illness are human beings. They are citizens. They have rights. The courts have been given authority to to temporarily abrogate those rights. They may hold someone for 72 hours. After that, the person is free to stay or go. It is not a matter of who released her.
No other medical condition is the basis for incarceration. Those of us with mental illness are denied rights that everyone else enjoys. Thanks to people like you who have no concern for our rights and have no understanding of our illness, we are singled out, stigmatized, imprisoned, ridiculed and ostracized.
Were it not for you and those who are likeminded singling us out in the ways just described, we might be more accepting of 'help.' There might be a better understanding of the problem, of how to deal with the problems, of how to treat the illness.
Does she need help? Obviously. Does she need her rights denied? Absolutely not. Does she need the intervention of people who are ignorant of her problem or the needed response? No. Those people need to find some other group on which they can lavish their ignorance.
cognito ergo populistae
I am perplexed by one notion: lumping release against the advice of doctors treating a patient for self-destructive behavior vs. NON-self-destructive behavior. I am not willing to ignore the difference.
In our society, while some people would defend the right to commit clear-headed suicide, I would guess that number would be much smaller if the hypothetical is muddle-headed self-destructive behavior. I would put myself in that middle group.
With treatment, Britney might not be self-destructive, and her kids wouldn't be at high risk of losing their mother -- in the name of defending her right to disregard her own health, mental and otherwise.
If a detoxed Britney on a mental health regimen nevertheless jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge, that's one thing. A slow-mo train wreck of an incoherent person is another.
Either way, it's a tragedy in real time. I for one hope for a third path, regardless of whether voluntary or imposed by the medical community and the courts.
I look forward to your thoughts.
In independent studies, those paid for governments and universites, not by the drug companies, no psychopharmaceutical works as well as a placebo and every such drug damages the brain. Studies as far back as 1962 prove conclusively that mental illness is not due to a chemical imbalance. They prove that it could not possibly be from a chemical imbalance.
Knowing what it isn't doesn't mean they know what it is. This has allowed drug companies to sell you a chemical for your presumed chemical imbalance.
If treatment doesn't work, in fact does actual harm, why favor such treatment? Actually, sometimes treatment does work. How? The placebo effect sometimes temporarily moderates the symptoms. The only other way it works is through the stimulant effect. SSRIs are in the same chemical class as cocaine and amphetamines. They are weak stimulants that have an effect on some people but not others.
Say you are depressed and I give you a stimulant then ask you how you feel. If you received that stimulant effect, you will tell me you feel better. Why? Because you have more energy. It is not because temporarily giving you more energy cured or moderated your mental illness.
Using these drugs for period longer than 2-6 months increases the chance of a recurrance of a psychotic episode by 5-10 times. The ranges are due to differing protocols used in different studies. This is one of the results of the damage done by the drugs.
There are no easy answers. That is because we know so little about mental illness. The drug companies have been leading us in the wrong direction for half a century. It's less likely you will get to your destination if you head off in the wrong direction.
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I can't imagine a credited mental hospital just up and letting her go. Doctors send you out of places like that after talking to your family, setting up outpatient plans, etc. How exactly UCLA managed to do all that without the approval/knowledge of Brit's father is beyond me.
And where is Brit's father anyway? Why is she out driving all over LA? If you're in charge and you think her life is at risk and that is your DAUGHTER, you drag her ass out of that car and take her home. Be a parent, Dad.
Even though your brain disease severely limits your reasoning power.
cognito ergo populistae
Okay,it probably won't save her,but so what?There are literally billions of people on this planet that are far more deserving than some spoiled celebutard who's flipped her wig because she suddenly stopped getting her way.And there are far better ways to make a living than "reporting" on this drivel and opining on what's best for her.What's best for the rest of the world is for you people to find something worthwhile to write about,and this skank to just go away.