Lil Nas X has revealed a bipolar diagnosis after a stint in rehab. British mental health charities, predictably, have called for more support. More of what, exactly? More coddling? More platforms for public confession? More ways to turn every personal struggle into a collective mandate for action? We are witnessing the triumph of the therapeutic culture: a world where every private malady becomes a public spectacle, and every spectacle demands a policy response.
Let us pause for a moment of historical perspective. The Victorians, for all their faults, understood that private suffering was to be borne with dignity, not paraded for applause. They would have looked at today’s celebrity disclosures – the constant stream of mental health diagnoses, the ritualistic apologies, the endless demands for ‘understanding’ – and seen not progress, but decadence. Decadence is what happens when a society loses its sense of proportion; when it mistakes emotional exhibitionism for moral courage.
The British mental health charities are complicit in this. They know that every celebrity breakdown is a fundraising opportunity. They know that the more we pathologise ordinary human unhappiness – the blues, the angst, the existential dread that every generation has faced – the more their budgets swell. But what are they actually achieving? Rates of mental illness in Britain have not declined; they have soared. We are medicating our children, excusing every failure, and building a culture of learned helplessness.
Lil Nas X is a symptom, not a cause. His music, his provocations, his entire persona is a product of an age that venerates victimhood. The bipolar diagnosis is the final badge of honour. It says: I am not just a performer; I am a sufferer. My pain is authentic, and it entitles me to your sympathy, your attention, your compliance. This is the logic of the victimhood hierarchy: the more you suffer, the more moral authority you possess.
The British public has been seduced by this narrative. We now have ‘mental health first aiders’ in schools, mindfulness in the workplace, and a whole lexicon of therapy-speak that has replaced ordinary language. When did we last hear someone say ‘I’m feeling a bit low’ without the immediate suspicion that they require professional intervention? We have turned the entire nation into a sprawling, anxious clinic.
The charities’ call for ‘more support’ is, of course, a demand for more funding. But funding is not a cure for the nihilism that pervades our culture. The real problem is not a lack of resources; it is a lack of resilience. We have stripped away the old consolations: faith, family, duty, national pride. We have told young people that their purpose is to be authentic, to express themselves, to pursue happiness. And when happiness eludes them, we offer them a diagnosis and a hashtag.
Rome fell because it lost its moral fibre. Britain will not fall, but it will continue to decay into a soft, self-obsessed, grievance-ridden society. Lil Nas X’s revelation is just another milestone on that downward slide. The charities will get their money. The headlines will fade. And we will be left with a generation that believes its pain is the most interesting thing about it.
I do not deny that bipolar disorder is a serious condition. But the way we talk about it now – the way we wrap it in the flag of identity, the way we demand that society rearrange itself around our wounds – is a form of intellectual decadence. We are teaching people to be ill. We are rewarding fragility. And we are calling it compassion.
