Dead heiress, Casey Johnson, and bisexual lover enhance stigma against "mentally ill"

Recently media hordes descended on the obviously disturbed, but possibly undiagnosed, celebrities Casey Johnson and Tila Tequila, after Ms Johnson was found dead in a friend's LA home by a maid who found her body naked and scarred in bed on January 4, according to news reports. Cause of death has not been determined, but Ms Johnson had been diagnosed as a child with juvenile diabetes which may have contributed to her death.

She was buried in an unmarked family plot Tuesday in Princeton, NJ after a private service organized by her father, and football's NY Jets owner, Woody Johnson. Ms Johnson was 30 and was an heiress to the Johnson & Johnson fortune.

Ms Tequila has been identified as "a reality/Internet personality." Her MySpace site includes a song for her "wife" Casey. Recent news reports said that she is attempting to adopt Ms. Johnson's child, Ava Monroe, who had been adopted from Kazakhstan. In December, Ms Johnson said she would be changing the child's last name to Nguyen, which is Ms Tequila's last name.

Though not diagnosed with any "mental illness," at least to the public's knowledge, Ms Johnson showed the negative behaviors of a troubled person suffering from untreated neuroeccentricities. In fact, she used them for notoriety in her alleged love tryst with Tila Tequila, possibly another troubled woman with undiagnosed mental health issues. 

Ms Tequila claimed Ms Johnson gave her an engagement ring, recently. She referred to Ms Johnson as her "wifey." Following Ms Johnson's death, Ms Tequila used the event for more notoriety on her Twitter account as she spread her grief throughout the world. Her public wailing apparently was in keeping with her obscene self-indulgent "Internet personality" persona.

The impact that this kind of notoriety of obviously disturbed celebritiescauses trouble for people struggling to reclaim their mental well-being. It perpetuates the stigma of "mental illness" because of the obscene, grotesque, and ugly behavior of celebrities and others who can afford treatment but resist it because it somehow affects their notoriety. Most people do not have adequate access to services that can help them develop the tremendous talents that may lie undiscovered in their "disorders."

This is especially true in the United States, a nation that has an overall "D" rating in mental health services, according to a 2009 survey by the National Association on Mental Illness. Services are lax and stigma is high. The antics of clowns, no matter how much personal pain, do great disservice to those who have no limelight, much less a home, a job, or a family.

Instead, society becomes harsher toward neuroeccentrics because characters, who have the resources to reclaim their mental well-being, become pathetic actors in a tragedy written by scheming journalists and choreographed by dull-witted paparazzi. The blowback from this disgusting show greatly affects those with few resources, but who may possess even greater talents than the dead heiress and her grotesque Internet diva.