Britney Spears Says She’s Ready for Freedom. Are We Ready to Let Her Have It?

Britney Spears Says She’s Ready for Freedom. Are We Ready to Let Her Have It?
Posted on Sep 24 2021
The Atlantic

Cultural attitudes regarding mental health have shifted. In the 2000s, reporters announced Spears’s “breakdowns,” and called her “insane.” Such language may have worsened Spears’s situation and fed into deep-seated stigmas. “Back then, I knew people who wouldn’t go for mental health care unless they could park their car far away, because they didn’t want anyone to see them going in,” Katrina Gay, CDO of NAMI said. “There was so much shame.” Gay identifies a “post-Britney turning point” in public sentiment. Stories like Spears’s, combined with the 2014 death of the actor Robin Williams, helped make it safer for celebrities to talk about mental health without being branded as dangerous or weak. If mental health is in play with a story, NAMI’s Gay directs journalists to guides on responsible reporting about the subject: with careful terminology; without speculating or diagnosing from afar; with full context about any conditions or treatments. But “media” these days includes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other forums for often-anonymous speculation. Gay said these outlets, where cruelty is “almost a sport,” give her the most concern, and that journalists should take care not to amplify the ugliest social-media messages.