People Magazine Defends Itself For Diagnosing Britney Spears, But Who Can Blame Them?
An interesting article on CNN talks about a mental health conference where none other than popwreck Britney Spears was the topic of conversation.
At the American Psychoanalytic Association conference last week in New York, a therapist from Chicago, Mark Smaller had this to say about the media's race to diagnose what might be at the root cause of Britney's seemingly endless string of problems:
"I've been very upset about this," says Mark Smaller, a psychoanalyst from Chicago who attended last week's meetings at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. "This idea of making a diagnosis of someone they've never met is completely inappropriate, and it gives mental health professionals a bad name."Not to mention that it's medically wrong. Smaller says that to make any real diagnosis, it can take several thorough consultations with a patient at the very least. "Trying to make such a diagnosis based purely on someone's behavior" — and worse, their behavior as portrayed selectively by the media — "is scientifically impossible," says Smaller, also director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation.
Mr. Smaller is absolutely right. We in the media have neither the right nor the medical acumen to diagnose a person's ailments whom we've never met, let alone, someone who is portrayed to us through the filter of paparazzi. It's unfair. But.....
Several of the bigger publications have quoted and (most likely hired) psychiatric consultants to weigh in on what may be contributing to Britney's unstable persona. Peter Castro, the deputy managing editor at People Magazine commented on the accusation leveled at the media:
"What people need to realize is that we had sources very close to Britney — more than one — telling us that they believed she did indeed suffer from mental illness, and some even used the term bipolar disorder," says Castro. "So it was only responsible on our part to ask a specialist in this kind of behavior. You had a woman here who was hospitalized. This is the first time we were hearing that hey, all this nutty behavior may really have something to do with mental illness, maybe bipolar disorder."Continued on the next page
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