Well, from the time I saw her interview and pretty much every time I've caught the program so far, I've been asking of whoever's in the room "Is it really OK for Channel 4 to put people who may not be 'well' into the program..'. She doesn't strike me as being all that mentally healthy.
How would you go about defining "mental health" - or, for that matter, "health" generally? Absence of illness? Slightly shifty goalposts, especially where mental health's concerned. Happiness? Back to definitions.
This is the problem. Absence of psychiatric illness (as defined, presumably, by ICD10 or similar) is not the same as "mental health" - and, where Big Brother is concerned, we're faced with a variety of individuals whose character traits might well be considered statistically unusual (in that they're fairly extreme exhibitionists/narcissists/whatever) but it doesn't automatically follow that these people are not "mentally healthy". One can probably speculate with a mild degree of accuracy how a given individual might react to situation stress, but not to the extent of being able to unequivocally predict problems.
Prospective BB housemates are assessed by a psychiatrist, who checks them and their history for evidence of serious psychiatric illness (depression, schizophrenia, addictions, eating disorders, etc.) and at least one psychologist carries out personality testing - but it'd be naive to suppose that this process could (or, arguably, should) screen out all individuals with a possibility of developing a psychiatric illness.
I don't think I've ever felt a housemate is "unwell" in the sense of having a defined psychiatric disorder. Last year, I thought Kitten had borderline personality disorder (which meant she was unlikely to tolerate the House, and it was silly to put her in) and this year, I initially reckoned Mary had histrionic personality disorder - but am wondering if schizotypal is nearer the mark. Alex, a few years back, had mild obsessive-compulsive disorder...
Other than those, I can't think of anyone offhand. |
