But, I also know that if this were me in mental crisis, and I had her kind of money and fame, it wouldn’t matter how many people I’d paid to isolate myself behind, my father would go through hell and high water to get to me. They’d have to shoot him first, and I don’t even think that would stop him.

However, I have a feeling that we are watching the slow suicide of Britney Spears. And when she’s gone, we can all sit and watch the finger-pointing. I swear it all makes me sick.

I don’t think Lynn or Jamie, or Jamie Lynn for that matter can just walk up to Casa de Britney and ring the doorbell. My guess would be that any paid friends, er, I mean staff are under instructions to keep mom and dad as far away from Britney as possible. Instructed either by Osama bin Loony or Nitwitney herself. I seriously doubt she takes phone calls from any family members either.

Britney has isolated herself (or someone has isolated her) so far away from her family that even if they WANTED to do something, it’s possible they can’t get close enough to her to even try.

If you or I were in the same situation, I doubt we could hire “managers,” “assistants,” and bodyguards to keep our family at bay (my guess as to why she also avoids court like the plague). I’m sure that Osama and Addon have access to Britney so tightly controlled that nobody can help her without them giving the word first.

…just like Howard K. Stern did with Anna Nicole.

Then again, my personal opinion is that she’s not Bipolar and rather that she’s more than likely someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. The two can be hard to distinguish from each other, which is why a trained professional who deals with either realm should be involved in the diagnostic process – should that ever happen. Oh, and, there’s just as high a prevalence of drug addiction and substance abuse issues with BPD as there is with Bipolar.

Characteristics clearly defined by mental health organizations such as…..

Suicide, promiscuity, poor judgment, lack of concentration, unrealistic beliefs in one’s abilities, spending sprees, drug abuse, denial that there is anything wrong, aggressive behavior

…..can manifest in ways that make someone suffering from manic depression appear to be self centered or selfish. You, yourself mentioned a great example of this – someone (possibly with dependants) who spends their life savings in a month on Amazon during a mania – does this look like selfish behavior to someone without bipolarity – perhaps that person’s spouse who is now without life savings? Sure it does. Is it selfish behavior if someone is manic depressive and left untreated? No, they are sick and need help. A chemical imbalance is no less serious than cancer.

You are correct to say that no self respecting medical journal/website would use such vague and confrontational terms like self centered and selfish -but rest assured the family members and those who deal with serious bipolarity on a daily basis would might disagree.

#18…

On the manic low side, a person experiences depression due to chemicals not firing off in their heads correctly. This person is invited to a birthday party of a friend, but due to manic depression, they feel isolated and cannot bring themselves to attend. The isolation is simply a coping skill or a reaction the to this unstable mood. A person experiences a high mania, they are anxious, overly excited. They respond to this mood as in they can’t stay still, they have to do something. So they use that energy to get on the internet and buy a thousand dollars worth of stuff on amazon.com that they don’t need. That’s there coping mechanism to this over excited mood. Now if you want to label either one of these people as being selfish and self centered, then go right ahead. But what you are doing is turning your labels into the symptoms. Again, I doubt you will find a bipolar info site that has in it’s symptoms list: “being selfish” and “being self centered”. This is just about how you label a persons reaction to a unstable mood. You stated in your post about these two things being symptoms of bipolar as if they are common medical fact and it’s simply not true.