For weeks now all our tabloid press and celebrity gossip magazines have featured pictures of Britney Spears. The latest news which no-one could have missed was of course her being detained in a psychiatric hospital.
The fact that she is legally detained means that the problem is serious enough for medical experts to believe she is a danger to herself or others. It does not mean she has given permission for all her legal rights to privacy to be taken away from her and neither has the law done that. Yet that is what our media seems to believe.
As someone who worked in the field of mental health for nearly twenty years I got fed up of reading derogatory comments about people with mental health problems. How would you like the idea of press photographers jostling up against you taking photos of you when you are feeling and looking at your worst?
Britney is someone who has sold herself on her good looks for a lot of years. She will now be looking in a mirror and see her sunken eyes and her face looking all creased - how do you think she feels about that? And everywhere she turns there is yet another camera flashing in her face!
Why do people going through what could possibly be the part of their life so far have to be attacked and criticised in the press? Does it really matter whether she brought it upon herself by abusing drugs and alcohol?
The fact is that this a person who went through some major stresses shooting to fame and fortune at an age when she no experience of how to cope with the changes pushed on her by record companies, managers, TV producers and newspapers trying to come up with some new scandal. Did anyone go looking for stories that would give her praise?
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” (Ephesians 4:29.)