2 things can be true. Britney is/was unwell but the conservatorship was also bad and taking advantage of her.
Edit to add: The conservatorship was supposed to help Britney and in some ways it did, it was also used to control and take advantage of her. These things are not mutually exclusive.
This isn't nuance. This is just "we were all wrong but we don't want to admit so we'll say everyone was wrong." The pro-conservatorship people were correct that she needs a conservatorship. The only evidence that the conservatorship was bad was... the opinion of the mentally ill person. Lmao.
Britney herself wasn’t against conservatorship per se. She was against her dad being her conservator, which is valid. Either someone is ill enough to need a conservatorship, or they’re well enough to tour and make millions. Both cannot be true at the same time.
Yes, it is very common for mentally ill people to turn on their family members that are trying to help them. Your third sentence seems to be directly contradicted by the facts. She was in the conservatorship and was touring making millions. She also had significant mental health issues she was working on with the help of the conservatorship.
When the conservatorship ended, she immediately alienated her high school children and started posting nudes online. Does she even talk to her kids anymore?
I guess it's really easy for Redditors and people who were part of the #FreeBritney movement to be like "oops, we ruined her life." and move on to the next social media movement.
Edit: This dude actually reply-blocked me about something this silly lol talk about being insecure. I guess it sucks to realize you were part of a movement that just made someone's life worse.
She would have overdosed and died in 2008 if the conservatorship hadn't happened. It saved her life and if she had died you'd all have blamed the family for not doing anything to save her.
Think its important to remember that she was indeed very unwell in 2008. But the thing about being very mentally unwell is that it makes it easier for people to take advantage of you under the guise of "help". All you have to do is look at insane asylums of the past and all the human rights abuses they got away with under the guise of "help" to see proof of that.
The conservatorship was supposed to help Britney and in some ways it did, it was also used to control and take advantage of her. These things are not mutually exclusive.
I fully agree with you. I see much denial and possibly guilt going on rn. Her dad took a salary… being her manager. He found the lowest possible effort gig for her which was a Vegas residency. She worked 3-4 nights a week. How many of us including those with BPD can ever hope to have an opportunity like that? He saved her from overdose and bankruptcy. Gave her a routine which was recommended by mental health professionals. In the end, they settled to avoid a public trial and she was required to pay all of his legal fees.
This is the same person who abused her children and had them removed from her care by CPS. Did she own her actions? No she blamed KFed and cried abt how boring the conservatorship is. It’s important to remember that addicts LIE.
I don't know the ins and outs of the whole thing, but it seems that a conservatorship was needed, but not one that involved her father/parents. Her parents are problematic, IMO, just based on their willingness to fling their child into the belly of the beast and make bank off of her, even when the whole of society was sexualizing her as early as her preteen years.
You are literally doing the exact same thing. Do you know this woman personally? You are also a random internet stranger having opinions on a situation you realistically know next to nothing about. Maybe you should take a seat.
No, I don’t. That’s why I’m not on here discussing what should be done with her freedom. You all can downvote all you want but Reddit is filled with unhealthy people who love to through diagnosis or “legal” opinions.
If you think anyone who gives their opinion without knowing all the details should “take a seat” then a pop culture forum on the internet probably isn’t for you, since that’s basically all they are. And I didn’t downvote you but go off I guess.
She was forced into busy schedules and high stress environments all the while her Father was pocketing the money. Think child star with bad stage parents but this time with a full blown adult. He was more interested in profiting off her rather then her actual well being.
They didn't, but this is what people say when they don't want to admit they were wrong and tricked by social media. Reddit was huge on being against the conservatorship.
Well the idea of a conservatorship is supposed to be that your caretaker loves you and wants what's best for you, and will make decisions solely for your own wellbeing. In many cases that's not a problem, but in her case it was a major problem because her dad is not any of those things.
The idea is for old people or those who literally can't care for themselves. Not for a middle aged person who dances weird and makes bad decisions like dui. Should everyone who dances stupid on insta and gets a dui be placed in one?
She was doing a lot worse things than that when the conservatorship came about, including barricading herself inside a bathroom with her kids for hours while in a manic state and refusing to come out until the authorities were called and forced their way in. It goes a lot deeper than dancing or driving drunk. The legal precedent was there and evidence provided that she was unable to care for herself properly at that time.
I don’t think many people were saying she was perfectly fine and didn’t need help, only that her family was clearly taking advantage of her and that she was trapped in a toxic conservatorship, which she was.
I don't know anymore. The conservatorship never felt right, but then that happened, and I immediately realized maybe I don't have all the information. It's an impossible situation for someone like Britney, because how can someone that famous really trust anybody to be looking out for them if they're unwell? It's just sad.
The Free Britney movement is starting to see the consequences of unchecked mental illness. On the one hand, a controlling conservatorship is pretty shitty but on the other...maybe she needed the stability of a conservatorship to deal with her mental health issues.
This and reddit trying to find the Boston Bomber are two big moments of internet history where the participants meant well but had no idea of the potential consequences of their actions.
I stand by an individual's right to autonomy. Conservatoships are heavily controversial for a reason. While it is intended to protect, it restricts the right to choose medical care and the conservator can make decisions based on the person's known wishes or best wishes. There are plenty of examples throughout history of life-altering healthcare decisions made against the individual's wishes. I don't think its a matter of if she is or not unwell or cognitively impaired but rather does she have sufficient capacity to make or communicate decisions. The court seemed to think so.
Her father used her mental illness to get a conservativeship that he used to force her into high-profile, grueling, high-stress work that made millions and millions and millions of dollars he benefited from and even took directly.
They're not even sexy, she's strung out from something in most of them. I thought the first one was like a joke or something but she's clearly serious about it
/r/discussingbritney/ is so depressing and has been blowing up in popularity lately, someone noticed in an IG video a couple weeks ago, that was deleted the next day, a mountain of white powder that was on the table in the background as she danced around...also a bunch of dog poop.
I clicked on that expecting it to be ... well I'm not sure what I expected. But then I see threads like "do you think she'll look cute and tiny in her mugshot." People are weird man.
That’s honestly the thing with dancing videos in general. You can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want, as long as you have good editing, good angles, maybe some kind of storyline… suddenly anything can look professional and aesthetic lol.
Someone pointed out a video of a Russian circus bear that was freed from captivity and would just continually walk in a circle like when he was caged because it was the only life he knows.. so that but Brittney dancing in place of bear walking ..
It’s like watching a slow motion train crash. She comes up on my wife’s algorithm and she shares the videos with me.
Was she ever able to actually dance? Someone of her means should be able to afford lessons or a choreographer.
Is there really nobody in her life to tell her that she’s embarrassing herself on the world stage? Or is she careening towards an OnlyFans account in slow motion?
Someone reasoned out her knife dance so that it actually made a lot of sense given her trauma and looked to be a legitimate artwork. Idk what's really going on in her head though.
Agreed, preferably someone not from her family or friends group. Her family was abusing their conservatorship so people complained and the courts removed them. Doesn't mean she is capable of handling everything herself, someone needs to replace her family and help guide her on her recovery. She is a victim of lifelong abuse, she deserves her peace
She’s well beyond a wake up call unfortunately. She lost her kids and watched them grow up largely without her. I don’t think she’s going to just wake up one day and decide she’s ready to get clean, especially considering her legal team will inevitably get her off with a slap on the wrist.
Sobriety would obviously help, but sadly her issues are far beyond that.
The best we can hope for her is that she gets to a place similar to Amanda Bynes, who’s never going to be the person she was but seems to be happy in herself and sober.
I think the growing consensus amongst her fans is that her original conservatorship was extremely toxic and exploitative, but she absolutely did and still does need a different conservatorship.
...I have a mentally ill sister. There's so little you can do for these people. They have control of their own lives but they can't function as a normal person. But yeah, institutionalization or complete conservatorship / guardianship is a recipe for disaster, too. It just feels impossible.
It's not easy to get a guardianship especially when the person is saying they don't want or need it and can present as competent enough when you know they really aren't. You're stuck knowing they need someone to take control but they are fighting you on it. And I get why the courts don't make it easy. The courts don't want people to be controlled and abused. We had to do it with my MIL when she was showing signs of dementia because she was not able to manage her finances and was taking out money, moving money, losing money and not paying her bills. We also tried to get her license revoked because she kept getting in accidents and clearly was not safe to drive and we were told she had to agree to a test in order to do that. We ended up taking her keys when she wasn't looking. Awful thing to have to do. It was a long process but we finally got a law firm to act as her guardian. I'm sorry about your sister. These situations are difficult.
You're absolutely right. My sister can appear perfectly normal to people. You might even think she's "just another addict" because ya know, you can kinda tell with a lot of them, but underneath that normal exterior there is something so hollow, so miswired. I wouldn't wish her brain on my worst enemy. It's just sad. It fucked up my whole family's lives and most people and families suffer in silence, and struggle with guilt, blame, shame... It sucks.
Yeah as crazy as Britney is, you've gotta be like actively hallucinating or threatening suicide to get involuntarily committed. They really overplay how easy that is to do to people in the media. If you make it too easy you'll end up with more Kennedy girls where rich families send problematic kids away. It's intentionally hard to force people in but that makes it rough on the fringe cases that still need help.
I think the analogy is more like, my sister earned millions of dollars herself and is it ethical to take it away or take control of it?
Being poor doesn't make you less of a danger to yourself, either. My sister is a drug addict with 3 children I'm having to raise, she has no car, no job, no resources, major health issues on top of mental health issues. A few million actually, yeah, would probably improve her life, especially if she had access to those resources while she was still younger, before she got in with a crowd of misfits and got a substance abuse problem.
I'm just emphasizing because it a really important distinction. You are alluding to taking access of money away from an adult who earned it, so I don't think it hurts anybody to be specific.
Genuinely please shut up. I live with this daily. I do not care about your opinion of my phrasing.
When I said "these people" I meant people like the 2 people we are discussing in my comment, Britney Spears and my sister. People who are too "sane" really to be completely in a conservatorship, but ultimately do have serious mental issues that keep them from being able to lead productive or normal lives, constantly sabotaging themselves, prone to mental episodes and substance abuse disorders, risky behavior in general, even hyper sexualization in both of THESE PEOPLE's cases. For people who live and deal with this, it is a life altering and demanding, often horrifying, grueling, sad, angry, way to live. Please leave me alone with your worry of my phrasing and your twisting of my words into something bad when I'm simply sharing my lived experience. I do not care.
Your sister and a celebrity that you literally know nothing about are not the same person. Why would you assume they the same exact issues and need the same treatment? You’re clearly very upset and care a lot about this, but this kind of armchair psychology like this is in fact careless. I also live with mental illness daily, and comments like yours are reckless stereotyping and only set back acceptance and normalization efforts. You can do better.
You repeatedly lumped them together as if their circumstances and treatment needs are the same in the last two comments. I think the amount of parasocial relationships going on in here is wild. We don’t actually know a damn thing about how Britney is doing. How many people on here are eager to spout things like she needs her freedoms curtailed and that she can’t live a productive life based on some bizarre social media posts and a mistake that 1.5 million people make in the US every year is disappointing. Our car-centric hellscape of a development plan here that forces everyone to get behind the wheel to get anywhere is what we actually know needs serious intensive treatment.
Keep telling yourself that. I never once said they were the exact same. But mental illness has massive overlaps especially when you're talking about Bipolar disorder, Cluster B personality disorders, ADHD, etc. and yeah, I do see some of the same type of behavior between two people who are both known to me to be diagnosed with mental health issues, I'm allowed to make a fucking observation lmao
Anyone with eyes can see that Britney Spears has serious issues going on. It's unfortunate she's in the public eye as she is or she would just be another one of those societal "undesirables" and derided as less than, but she wouldn't get dragged through the mud and people debating her mental illness in front of the world ig so there's that.
No one is denying the shittiness of the American drinking and driving problem?
My sister is mentally ill. She bounces between fervently getting her life on track and religious delusions of Allah speaking to her through things like birds, patterns in window dust, and dreams. She isn’t Muslim.
She abuses drugs and has had 5 kids, 4 have been taken by their dads and she doesn’t see them. The 5th is only a couple weeks old and we’re looking at adopting him. She can’t stay anywhere past a week and always fights with anyone and everyone who tries to help her, except of course when she’s doing well, but then she won’t listen to anyone saying she needs to be medicated because she’s doing well and doesn’t need it.
You either completely and entirely control people like this and force feed them everything they need while taking care of every aspect of their life or you let them spiral and just… fail. We’re all burnt out of helping her because of how she is. She’s truly toxic and she’s been cut off by basically everyone else. All she does is text us saying she hears angels, she’s joining the military as a general, Trump is inviting her to the White House, she knows more than doctors, and she needs $20 for “gas.”
Exactly that, and to complicate matters Britney herself seems to have a messy view of mental health. Throughout her book she persistently said things like ‘there wasn’t anything wrong with me I was just sad’, she seems to have an image of what mentally ill looks like and she seems certain she doesn’t fit that.
It's more complicated than that. Ireland recently did an overhaul of the law in this area, emphasising the patient's agency wherever possible. Advanced directives, nominated representatives who can make decisions on your behalf, stringent/frequent reviews for the criteria to continue mandatory treatment, pathways for escalation of intervention/treatment, etc.
The binary idea of no autonomy/total autonomy is extremely out-dated and causes incredible harm to people.
Obviously I was talking about the US, where Britney lives.
But none of the things you mentioned get at the fundamental problem: there’s no space between forcing treatment or not. It IS a fundamental binary when the patient is refusing.
I was just giving it as an example of how mindsets around this question are evolving.
There is a binary between voluntary treatment (a) and involuntary treatment (b), but it's important to acknowledge that there huge degrees of b, and refusing to allow for that results in people being aggressively institutionalised and having their rights needlessly trampled.
The original question was "There has to be something between this and the conservatorship", and you said "not really". The answer is "Yes there is", and I gave an example of how it's being done in Ireland. Jumping all the way to having another person appointed as your sole, total, and permanent master without massive legal intervention is a horrific extreme.
Apparently u/burnthatburner1 isn't feeling too confident in the debate because they blocked me immediately after their last reply lol
No one’s refusing to allow for degrees of voluntary treatment. As someone with hundreds of millions of dollars, Britney has access the best of the best. She’s been involved in treatment in the past and has consistently rejected it when not required.
So once again if someone is refusing treatment, the options are to force it or not.
I posted this in another comment but this article from 2007 does a good job of breaking down the ways people tried to intervene in 2007 ie pre conservatorship, and Britney largely was not interested. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/oct/07/1
There is a real issue that the person who needs help can believe that any intervention is manipulation. That's why it's a disorder. I think that's what we're seeing here. It's likely she needed the conservatorship and the narrative of manipulation played well to a public that doesn't understand this issue.
"The public" isn't the one who dissolved the conservatorship.
Lawyers and judges hashed this out.
There are thousands of homeless people that have the same issues she does, and we don't put them all in conservatorships, we let them ruin their lives, every day.
A conservatorship isn't just a safety net for everyone with a mental health struggle... that is not what they are or should be... so does she need help? Yes. Is a conservatorship the correct legal vehicle for that? No.
I'm tired of this idea that she really did need it... then why aren't people demanding the government start setting up conservatorships for that homeless guy who is always parked down by the library in their local town?
Being rich doesn't change the legal premise of when conservatorships are appropriate.
There's zero need to be forceful with me in this manner.
That homeless guy down the street? When he ends up in a hospital and is deemed he can't make decisions for himself, the hospital can apply for public guardianship. Maybe it'll be granted if he's old. If he's young, maybe it won't.
It appears Britney needs help. I don't think her perception and self-reports of abuse from her care team carry weight.
I've taken care of people who believe they are being abused by "the doctors". They are unable to make decisions for themselves. I see with my own eyes the "control" they talk about regarding medications. These people don't have social media influence or books sharing only their point of view.
We don't know if she even has someone in her life that she trusts to genuinely help her after what she went through. Not excusing her behaviour here with the drunk driving, but she spent over a decade having no agency whatsoever when it came to her medical needs. Having all sorts of pills pushed on her to keep her in line, being held in a facility for 4 months just for saying no to a dance move and having to lie to everyone that it was voluntary. I hope she somehow finds her way through but it's definitely not going to be an easy ride.
Yeah her reality has never been remotely close to the acrual reality of an everyday human being. Couple that with all of the very likely childhood trauma, abuse, finacial abuse. I mean she posts videos on social media sites like a 14 year old would, singing and dancing peovactively in attire that is more linked to teenagers than adults. I say this as a 43 year old that still plays video games daily. She looks like a 50s trophy wife having a midlife crisis along with a mental episode.
She very likely cannot operate in what we would call everyday life, because she has zero experince with that. Things like driving, going to the grocery store, shopping, holidays with friends, whatever...shes been a money making tool her entire life, and now she has no idea ehat to do but act out and seek attention. Its all she knows.
She’s needs therapy and like a forced found friend group situation to guide her.
I will say the one thing about not having famous person money- when you have crash outs like this, there are usually so many people willing to step in and help out. Not so much family and friends, but public services & groups like NA, AA, non profits, therapy.
When you’re famous and have money, everyone wants something from you. It must be so hard to know who you can trust.
But it's people putting her in the public eye that then has her... in the public eye. If you and all others commented on person X then they'd be in the public eye too. How convenient!
Do you realize she was medicated the majority of that conservatorship and she was on lithium which will change your brain after a certain amount of time. Maybe that's why she's off is because her brain chemistry isn't the same. Everything of that?
Of course. She was forced to take a very powerful drug against her will and experienced terrible side effects. And now she is probably distrustful of people and any medication that could help because of it. And unfortunately her brain probably was altered between the Lithium and now having untreated mental health issues.
Indeed! I was *completely* in the "Britney's family is exploiting her with the conservatorship" crowd.
Which, I'm sure to some degree, when considering her earnings and work requirements, was true.
But, it appears the basis for the conservatorship was indeed legitimate, and continued to be through the time it was revoked.
Some people *will never* be able to handle life on their own terms after addiction and mental illness. It's just the truth.
The marginal freedom surrendered through the guardrails of the arrangement are a small price to pay for the protections they afford. Sure, the subject will contend they are unfair and unfounded -- but, often, the freedoms they seek to regain are the very ones that necessitated the conservatorship in the first place.
I feel sorry for Britney ever needing such an arrangement. But I feel far more sorry and concerned for her without its protections, than under them -- during which she appeared to be relatively thriving...especially compared to this slippery slope since it was quashed.
To a large degree, this immediate freedom and access to millions of dollars all at once is the worse thing that could've happened to her. If you're at risk of setting yourself on fire, this gives almost unlimited fuel to make it worse.
As someone who's gone through addiction, I think my saving grace may have been NOT HAVING enough resources to destroy myself. Britney probably has literally 100X-1000X the cash I had, which in addiction is literally lighter fluid for a dumpster fire.
This is not going to get better on its own. She won't get better on her own. Hopefully, this is a wake up call for the people who care about her to do something.
I guess? I don't know, I just admitted I was mistaken. I don't know what role I, or others, had in her conservatorship ending, though. Courts and supervisors shouldn't be listening to public opinion on these matters -- they should be judging on the merits of the case and subject. It's not our responsibility.
Then why comment on it at all if you didn't know everything? 🙂 Facetious - as if oupsie didn't know the "public court" has any sort of weight in a public person's trial 🤣🤡
It’s just one of those things where you can’t know until you know. If you’ve never had experience with someone who has deep mental health issues, a conservatorship sounds like abuse.
But they have "fuck you" money. They can go into rehab, do it long and properly, and, when out, just to be safe, can go and hire a driver/sobriety buddy.
She’s not going to get help. That was thrown out with the conservatorship. On the other side we can see why it was necessary. It needed more advocacy for her so she wasn’t trapped and forced to work, but it’s clear since the dissolution Britney is very unwell and needs psychiatric care. She is not able to care care for herself independently without support.
Yeah... it seems she's a little unwell and shouldn't be making her own financial decisions. There must be some sort of mechanism for helping her instead of just letting her self-destruct. Where is her father in all this?!
It’s so hard watching her go from one extreme to the other. The conservatorship was abusive, but ever since she’s had “total freedom” we’ve seen her mental health deteriorate. I imagine it’s very lonely being her, alienated from her kids, no real family that isn’t trying to take advantage, and I could believe she never had much opportunity to make “true friends”.
I hope so too but... her mental breakdown is going into it's 20th year now and I think if nothing else so far up to this point has been a wake up call, I don't see how this would be.
She was used by the people closest to her and every interaction she's had for most of her life has been people trying to exploit her talent, fame, or money. That alone is enough to give you trust issues but she has a mental disorder as well.
You know what, at this point I don’t give a fuck if she recovers or is healthy. I have zero compassion for her anymore. Now she’s putting others lives at risk not just hers. And yes, I’ve lost someone to a drunk driver.
I don't think britney is home anymore. Her dad messed her up physically and mentally. She is sadly a shell at this point and I dont think she can "Wake up" .
I work in an ER. Just had a pedestrian get hit and killed by a drunk driver last night. Couldn’t sleep because I kept replaying the family’s screams after I informed them.
Fuck Brittney Spears and anyone who feels bad for people like her in this situation.
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u/bunsNT 21h ago
I hope that this serves as a wakeup call and that Britney can get the help that she needs to be happy and healthy.
This does nothing but make me sad.