What is actually going on with Britney?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I remember before her first breakdown, she didn't come across as particularly smart, but she absolutely did not seem "intellectually disabled," as some posters have said. In fact she seemed charming and relatively mature and articulate [for a teenage pop star from rural Louisiana].

For example, here's an interview from 2000, when she would have been around 18 or 19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZnYKuJ51R0

Nowadays I agree she seems to have lost brainpower.

100% in agreement, PP
Is bipolar enough to explain it? I mean Kanye spouts absurd anti-black, antisemitic hateful things but he doesn’t otherwise seem as mentally incapacitated as Britney does these days.

She was very sweet, kind, and of average intelligence in the early 2000s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

Just want to add that the media and many, many members of her team also exploited her for profit.

Lots of people on this thread have correlated her mental illness with her pregnancy, but I imagine public scrutiny and humiliation she endured played a bigger role. She had no support system.

She had her kids at a fairly young age, around 23/24 IIRC. That’s definitely within the common age range of onset schizophrenia. It’s possible her illness would have manifested even if she never had kids or been in the industry. She’d just be living with her parents or homeless instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

I’m the PP directly above you and I disagree completely that she’s always been “intellectually disabled.” You do know how low functioning you have to be to earn that diagnosis, right?

Family exploitation, yes. Bipolar disorder, almost certainly. ID, no. She’d present very differently.

agree, I hate that diagnosis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

I’m the PP directly above you and I disagree completely that she’s always been “intellectually disabled.” You do know how low functioning you have to be to earn that diagnosis, right?

Family exploitation, yes. Bipolar disorder, almost certainly. ID, no. She’d present very differently.

Possibly low average to lower limits of average IQ plus mental illness

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

Just want to add that the media and many, many members of her team also exploited her for profit.

Lots of people on this thread have correlated her mental illness with her pregnancy, but I imagine public scrutiny and humiliation she endured played a bigger role. She had no support system.

She had her kids at a fairly young age, around 23/24 IIRC. That’s definitely within the common age range of onset schizophrenia. It’s possible her illness would have manifested even if she never had kids or been in the industry. She’d just be living with her parents or homeless instead.

Bi-polar/schizophrenia can be caused having children or suffering abuse? I thought they are just inherent chemical imbalances that take time to develop?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember before her first breakdown, she didn't come across as particularly smart, but she absolutely did not seem "intellectually disabled," as some posters have said. In fact she seemed charming and relatively mature and articulate [for a teenage pop star from rural Louisiana].

For example, here's an interview from 2000, when she would have been around 18 or 19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZnYKuJ51R0

Nowadays I agree she seems to have lost brainpower.

100% in agreement, PP
Is bipolar enough to explain it? I mean Kanye spouts absurd anti-black, antisemitic hateful things but he doesn’t otherwise seem as mentally incapacitated as Britney does these days.

She was very sweet, kind, and of average intelligence in the early 2000s.

Kanye is very intelligent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

She's not intellectually disabled. She's just kind of stupid, and has very little education on top of that.

[Anonymous]

Guys I don’t understand, I just looked at her recent Instagram and it seems identical to her Instagrams certainly since she was “freed” and basically what it was before that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I remember before her first breakdown, she didn't come across as particularly smart, but she absolutely did not seem "intellectually disabled," as some posters have said. In fact she seemed charming and relatively mature and articulate [for a teenage pop star from rural Louisiana].

For example, here's an interview from 2000, when she would have been around 18 or 19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZnYKuJ51R0

Nowadays I agree she seems to have lost brainpower.

100% in agreement, PP
Is bipolar enough to explain it? I mean Kanye spouts absurd anti-black, antisemitic hateful things but he doesn’t otherwise seem as mentally incapacitated as Britney does these days.

She was very sweet, kind, and of average intelligence in the early 2000s.

Kanye is very intelligent.

That’s my point. Everyone saying oh, she's bipolar. But mania and depression cycles don’t explain her current childlike demeanor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

I’m the PP directly above you and I disagree completely that she’s always been “intellectually disabled.” You do know how low functioning you have to be to earn that diagnosis, right?

Family exploitation, yes. Bipolar disorder, almost certainly. ID, no. She’d present very differently.

Possibly low average to lower limits of average IQ plus mental illness

I didn’t say she was a rocket scientist, but she almost certainly doesn’t have ID.

To answer a different PP, yes, years of poorly controlled bipolar disorder (or schizophrenia/schizoaffective, which I don’t think she has) could contribute to overall decline in cognitive abilities. Going on and off some of those meds can negatively impact the brain. But I still think most of what we’re seeing is severe mental illness, not well treated. It’s heartbreaking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

Just want to add that the media and many, many members of her team also exploited her for profit.

Lots of people on this thread have correlated her mental illness with her pregnancy, but I imagine public scrutiny and humiliation she endured played a bigger role. She had no support system.

She had her kids at a fairly young age, around 23/24 IIRC. That’s definitely within the common age range of onset schizophrenia. It’s possible her illness would have manifested even if she never had kids or been in the industry. She’d just be living with her parents or homeless instead.

Bi-polar/schizophrenia can be caused having children or suffering abuse? I thought they are just inherent chemical imbalances that take time to develop?

DP (who just posted, but I think these issues are important to clarify) - both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are highly heritable, i.e., there’s a strong genetic component. In women, both tend to emerge in the early to mid-20s (vs. late teens for men). There are environmental contributors to both, such as exposure to childhood trauma, among others, but genes do play a large role.

The hormonal shifts associated with pregnancy/postpartum can impact the presentation of these illnesses, though that’s relatively understudied. Overall, estrogen tends to be protective against psychosis, hence schizophrenia being more common among men than women.

If she had schizophrenia/schizoaffective she’d likely appear far weirder than she does. I don’t say that out of criticism; there’s a bizarreness to these diagnoses that she doesn’t have. She also doesn’t seem thought disordered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

Just want to add that the media and many, many members of her team also exploited her for profit.

Lots of people on this thread have correlated her mental illness with her pregnancy, but I imagine public scrutiny and humiliation she endured played a bigger role. She had no support system.

She had her kids at a fairly young age, around 23/24 IIRC. That’s definitely within the common age range of onset schizophrenia. It’s possible her illness would have manifested even if she never had kids or been in the industry. She’d just be living with her parents or homeless instead.

Bi-polar/schizophrenia can be caused having children or suffering abuse? I thought they are just inherent chemical imbalances that take time to develop?

DP (who just posted, but I think these issues are important to clarify) - both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are highly heritable, i.e., there’s a strong genetic component. In women, both tend to emerge in the early to mid-20s (vs. late teens for men). There are environmental contributors to both, such as exposure to childhood trauma, among others, but genes do play a large role.

The hormonal shifts associated with pregnancy/postpartum can impact the presentation of these illnesses, though that’s relatively understudied. Overall, estrogen tends to be protective against psychosis, hence schizophrenia being more common among men than women.

If she had schizophrenia/schizoaffective she’d likely appear far weirder than she does. I don’t say that out of criticism; there’s a bizarreness to these diagnoses that she doesn’t have. She also doesn’t seem thought disordered.

If there are no environmental contributors are the genetic issues less likely to appear?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I agree with most of this. I have a feeling she is and has always been intellectually disabled, but somewhat of a performing savant, which happens, so her extreme mental illness coupled with ID is a scary and devastating combo. Complete speculation. It also would paint her family in a terrible light for taking advantage of her talents while exploiting, essentially, a small child in mind and body (I think she’s far from a teen, mentally).

I’m the PP directly above you and I disagree completely that she’s always been “intellectually disabled.” You do know how low functioning you have to be to earn that diagnosis, right?

Family exploitation, yes. Bipolar disorder, almost certainly. ID, no. She’d present very differently.

Possibly low average to lower limits of average IQ plus mental illness

I didn’t say she was a rocket scientist, but she almost certainly doesn’t have ID.

To answer a different PP, yes, years of poorly controlled bipolar disorder (or schizophrenia/schizoaffective, which I don’t think she has) could contribute to overall decline in cognitive abilities. Going on and off some of those meds can negatively impact the brain. But I still think most of what we’re seeing is severe mental illness, not well treated. It’s heartbreaking.

Yep, this makes sense to me. She’s never been a genius but she’s been perfectly capable of expressing herself with poise and without embarrassing herself. I would say average, not really low-average intelligence back then. She always was girlish but the current situation is something else completely—so I do think the mental illness + heavy meds have broken her brain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I remember before her first breakdown, she didn't come across as particularly smart, but she absolutely did not seem "intellectually disabled," as some posters have said. In fact she seemed charming and relatively mature and articulate [for a teenage pop star from rural Louisiana].

For example, here's an interview from 2000, when she would have been around 18 or 19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZnYKuJ51R0

Nowadays I agree she seems to have lost brainpower.

Watching this video now is very sad since we know how she is today. She was very articulate, mature,sweet and normal back then. When did she change? Wasn’t it around the time of her first marriage? That was the first inkling we had that she wa so not as she seemed?

[Anonymous]

I will go out on my own and say I disagree with how her Dad has been painted. Read the same New Yorker article -- guy lives in a trailer outside her hometown in Louisiana, definitely not living the glam life thanks to her.

I think she had a breakdown or the onset of serious mental illness, and her parents freaked out like any of us would (minus having a billionaire kid at risk of being exploited by the world). I think the conservatorship itself was justified, though many of the terms of it were not.

Also, think Kanye should have one, as should my 40 year old brother who makes $150k yet can't pay rent or meet many other requirements of adulthood.