Van Gough cut off his ear; Britney shaved her head.

It seem at once ridiculous and perfectly sensible to begin a blog about mental health with Britney Spears. For every generation there’s a new brand of crazy and there’s a new genius. Though I will happily line up behind those who say Britney is spoiled and nuts–and heartily agree–her recent escapades and the collective cultural consciousness seems to have suddenly declared “mental illness! bipolar disorder!” without any sort of understanding about what this means. It leaves me puzzled and interested in how much stigma still runs rampant in our society.

As Noel Irwin Hentschel blogged last month on the Huffington Post:

If Britney Spears was diagnosed with diabetes requiring ongoing medical treatment, as a community would we not be empathetic to her condition? We would acknowledge how tough it must be for this young girl, her children and her parents to have to go through the tragedy of a debilitating and potentially fatal illness. We do not label those with other medical conditions; why then is it still acceptable in today’s society to place hurtful and damaging labels on those struggling with mental health issues? Mental illness has had a stigma attached to it since the middle-ages. We should have moved beyond this by now.

I will probably say it again and again on this blog as it progresses, but mental illness is the last socially acceptable stigma in our society. Britney is in essence the ideal candidate to go through a public dissection, diagnosis, and (hopefully) recovery, because the public and the media are already so used to humiliating her. As MSNBC’s Michael Ventre said in a recent commentary, “I’d call this a cautionary tale about the effects of global celebrity and Hollywood excess except nobody seems to be exercising any caution, especially certain segments of the press.”