For far too long, topics relating to depression, mood disorders, and anxiety have been labeled taboo. It’s time to tear off the veil of secrecy surrounding mental health issues.
Sadly, those who were brave enough to come forward with their mental health struggles were frequently stigmatized by society at large. As a result of this intense, unwarranted judgment, many individuals felt there was no choice but to keep their disorders a secret.
With the passage of time, we’ve seen a turn of the tides in the US surrounding topics relating to mental illness. Now that research sheds light on how common these issues are, many people are encouraged to speak out about them. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 5 individuals in the US struggle with issues relating to mental health.
Celebrities open up about mental health issues
For decades, mega-stars did their best to present only the most polished and sparkling versions of themselves and even give off an aura of mystery.
But nowadays, many celebrities are opening up to fans about their mental health struggles. Consumers of pop culture seem hungry for shared stories and experiences that are transparent and relatable rather than glamorized perfection. This cultural shift permits movie stars and pop sensations to get real with the world about personal issues that are far from picture-perfect.
Eliminating the stigma associated with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and more
When megastars get vulnerable and share about their behavioral health issues, individuals who are battling with mental illness feel seen. Knowing that their favorite actors and musicians also deal with anxiety, OCD, and depression can help so many people feel less alone.
And, fans can feel less ashamed about their own personal struggles when the people they look up to face similar obstacles.
If Selena Gomez can release an entire documentary about her experiences with bipolar disorder, it takes a weight off of people’s shoulders. If Megan The Stallion can shamelessly drop a track called “Anxiety,” fans can feel a sense of validation for their emotions. There’s something so comforting about knowing these mega-stars really are “just like us.”
But are these celebrities oversharing about their mental health?
Are Celebrities too candid with fans?
Not everyone is on board with this newfound transparency. On the other hand, a growing number of pop culture consumers think these celebs’ first-world issues have no relation to real-world problems and leave them totally out of touch.
Considering how wealthy most A-list stars are…some are convinced that celebrities will never understand the tribulations that lower and middle-class people face. As a result, some argue that celebrities have resources and access to things most of us could never dream of so they should have less mental stress.
Back in 2022, Bella Hadid was famously dragged when a resurfaced clip featured her crying when she couldn’t have a designer bag.
Of course, we’re all aware that Kendall Jenner has faced years of criticism for using her platform to talk about her crippling anxiety,
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“There is going to be those people that say, ‘Oh, OK, what does she have to worry about? What does she have to be anxious about?” the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star said in an interview with Vogue.
While Jenner goes on to acknowledge her privilege, she also says that fame doesn’t automatically preclude her troubles with mental illness. The reality star adds, “I’m still a human being at the end of the day.”
And let’s not forget during the height of the pandemic, when A-listers were brutally attacked online for complaining about being stuck inside their homes despite living in million-dollar mansions. In this instance, the masses were not so quick to sympathize with celebrities’ complaints.
When Ellen Degeneres whined about being unable to go outside during the pandemic and compared it to “being in jail,” the general public called her out.
Sophie Turner and other celebrities use their platform to advocate for mental health
But the notion that celebrities are out of touch when it comes to their first-world struggles is only half the argument.
Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan stirred the pot when he suggested many celebrities “fake” mental health issues in an effort to boost their careers. “Sadly, I know a lot of well-known people (not The Rock) who’ve jumped on the ‘victimhood’ bandwagon to get positive publicity for themselves,” the controversial figure tweeted in 2019. “They do those with genuine mental illness a great disservice.”
His controversial take was met with a wave of backlash from celebs and the general public alike. Game of Thrones superstar Sophie Turner, who is an avid advocate of mental health, clapped back at the Good Morning Britain host.
She responded in a heated tweet, saying, "Or maybe they have a platform to speak out about it and help get rid of the stigma of mental illness, which affects 1 in 4 people in the UK per year. But please go ahead and shun them back into silence.”
Sophie Turner via Twitter
There seems to be a divide over how people feel about celebrities sharing intimate details regarding their mental health affairs. Whether you believe stars are splattering personal concerns all over social media simply to remain relevant or if you genuinely think they do a terrific job destigmatizing mental health problems is entirely up to you.
Personally, I love it when people like Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande reveal their struggles with depression and anxiety because it makes me feel less sensitive and ashamed about my own inner frailties. And I feel less alone.
The way I see it, when someone like Kendall Jenner gets brutally honest about her journey with crippling anxiety, it creates a sense of unity for everyone out there who is dealing with the same thing. Kendall, along with a slew of other celebrities, leverages her platform to build a fervent discourse on topics that have been swept under the rug for far too long.
Could the DNC Steal Votes From Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire and Beyond?
Statistical anomalies in previous elections point to frightening vulnerabilities in how votes are tallied
In 2012, Mitt Romney was declared the winner of the GOP's Iowa caucus by a margin of just eight votes.
That result was announced at 1:30 AM on Caucus night, but two weeks later there was a different result. The Republican Party of Iowa had performed a recount of the votes and Rick Santorum—a candidate broadly considered too far outside the mainstream to stand a chance in the general election—was revealed as the actual winner. By that point of course it was far too late. Romney had already gotten the media attention that comes with winning, and had capitalized on that sense of momentum to achieve a solid victory in the New Hampshire primary.
Business Insider
If that sounds familiar, that's because there is currently a "recanvassing" under way in Iowa to reassess the results of a contest that will once again be decided by a very slim margin. Though Bernie Sanders managed a clear victory in the popular vote, Iowa's elaborate system for awarding "State Delegate Equivalents" at each caucus location (to then be converted to the actual delegate count that determines the Democratic party's nominee), has resulted in a near-tie between Senator Sanders and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
The official winner may not be announced for days or weeks—or it may never be known at all. In the mean time, Pete Buttigieg declared himself the winner on Caucus night, and has been treated as such by much of the media. With Sanders looking more and more like the frontrunner, Buttigieg is seen as much more palatable to moderate general election voters, and many powerful donors and party insiders would much rather he get the nomination. With that in mind, the chaos in Iowa—particularly the faulty app and the release of partial results that seemed to favor Buttigieg—has already sparked speculation of party corruption and election rigging for Sanders voters holding on to memories of the DNC's favoritism toward Hillary Clinton in 2016, but it may be more instructive to consider the model of the 2012 Republican primaries.
AP
2012 was not a simple year for Republicans in the way 2016 was for Democrats. Much like the 2020 field of Democratic candidates, there was not a presumptive nominee, but rather a wide field of contenders with centrists—Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman—struggling against the enthusiastic support for more extreme candidates like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul. Polling seemed to swing wildly, from one candidate to the next until—according to some accounts—the RNC tipped the scales toward the man considered the most electable (read: bland and inoffensive) candidate.
The case of bias for Romney is as elaborate and detailed as every budding conspiracy theory about Acronym, Shadow Inc., and the new "Voter Protection Director" for the Nevada State Democratic Party—especially considering the contentious events of the Nevada Democratic Party state convention in 2016. Likewise, the overwhelming variety of those details is evidence—depending on your perspective—of either how insidious the whole plot was, or of the depths of its adherents' delusion.
Chase Stevens/AP
For a start, there were a variety of issues in that year involving states attempting to increase their influence on the process by ignoring the traditional schedule for primaries and caucuses, skipping ahead of other states. The RNC was conflicted about how to handle that tactic, but many voters felt that the resulting schedule favored Romney's candidacy by allowing states where he polled well to vote earlier, further emphasizing the sense of building momentum. That much was acknowledged as a problem even at the time, but there are other issues that remain murkier. Was the miscount in Iowa intentional? Did the RNC combine fundraising with Romney's campaign too early? Did they pad Romney's delegate count to prevent a brokered convention? Most worryingly of all, were votes flipped to Romney in state primaries that lacked a paper trail?
Whatever the confusion in Iowa, the caucus system is at least public and relatively easy to monitor. But primaries that are carried out with all electronic voting machines are a black box, and the state parties run the show with little oversight. Unlike a federal election, primaries are fundamentally under the purview of political parties. They can choose their nominees however they like. They have chosen a roughly democratic system for a variety of reasons (to build enthusiasm, test candidates' campaign skills, and avoid voter alienation) but if they wanted to undermine the integrity of that process in order to ordain the candidate they see as standing the best chance in the general election, there would be little to stop them. According to two statisticians, Francois Choquette and James Johnson, that is exactly what happened in 2012.
Choquette and Johnson, 2012
When Choquette and Johnson analyzed vote totals out of hundreds of precincts, they discovered a strong tendency for voters in larger precincts to favor Mitt Romney more than did voters in smaller precincts. These results have been criticized as attributable to demographic differences between precincts, but when researchers looked at results out of precincts that kept paper records of voting, that tendency disappeared. Likewise in Utah—where Romney was always expected to win by a wide margin—the results showed no shift in preference toward Romney based on the size of the precinct. The trend was so distinct in competitive precincts with no paper trail that Choquette and Johnson were unable to account for it as a result of chance or any factor other than deliberate fraud. According to their work, Romney received approximately a 7% bump in the most populous precincts in multiple states as a result of votes flipped from other candidates—allowing him to secure the nomination handily.
Choquette and Johnson's evidence was brought to court in a lawsuit filed by a third statistician at Witchita State University. Beth Clarkson works in the university's National Center for Advanced Materials Performance, and was inspired by Choquette and Johnson's research to investigate similar anomalies in Kansas's 2014 general election—larger precincts trending toward Republican candidates. She sued to gain access to more detailed records in order to build a statistical model that could shed light on the question of fraudulent vote flipping. Unfortunately Clarkson's efforts were stymied by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who argued that releasing the time-stamped records could somehow violate voter anonymity.
Kris Kobach with Donald Trump
You may recognize Kris Kobach as perhaps the greatest enemy of unbiased elections in recent American history. Kobach is the man whose voter fraud commission pushed the false narrative of millions of fake voters in support of discriminatory voter ID laws, and whose apparent political and white-supremacist motivation for adding a citizenship question to the national census resulted in the Supreme Court rejecting the change—which would have led to dramatic under-counts of immigrant populations, and a shift in congressional districts that would disproportionately benefit the Republican party. While he was able to halt Clarkson investigation, many have credited her lawsuit as being instrumental in the push for recently enacted legislation which now requires post-election audits in Kansas. Reached for Comment, Clarkson admitted that this was a step in the right direction, though she was "not impressed" with the audit techniques being utilized.
Overall, Clarkson seems pessimistic about the fidelity and security of our elections, saying that there is still a lot of potential for fraudulent vote counts, "anytime there's no way to check a paper record." This does include several races in the Democratic primaries, though the New Hampshire primary taking place today is utilizing paper ballots, which leave less room for tampering. Nationally, there has been a push to move toward that model, but for those of us who will be casting votes on electronic machines, Clarkson advocated that, where possible, voters check their electronic vote against the paper record to ensure their vote was recorded correctly. And for all voters, Clarkson had a reminder to check your voter registration online in advance of every election. With recent voter purges Clarkson says there have been many cases "of people being surprised when they arrive at the polls to vote and find out, 'Oh, they don't have me down as a registered voter.'"
ACLU
Beyond that, electronic voting remains so opaque and vulnerable, all we can do is continue pushing for paper-based voting systems and remind our nation's political institutions—as the primary process continues through New Hampshire and beyond—that we are watching them; that we will not take any irregularities lightly.