Catherine Zeta-Jones: A reflection on the press coverage

It's clear that the actress has been having a terrible time. What seems to have happened is that she was initially treated for bipolar disorder some years ago. Since then her husband has had cancer and legal problems, and she has had a stay in a combined mental health hospital and rehabilitation unit for depression, as well she might. She has been discharged now and is feeling much better. So we should, rightly, feel both sad and happy for her. Talented to the point of brilliance in her hypomania and tormented by the seemingly eternal tedium and pain of clinical depression, she fits the bill for bipolar disorder magnificently.

I loath and detest celebrity gossip. No instrument has yet been invented to measure my indifference to Katie Price's antics. So what's the difference with Zeta-Jones? Her story is one that is repeated time and again within the privacy of our NHS mental health services (may God preserve). However,  she had to issue a press release about it because of the media, and we can only imagine that being forced to come out like that would be a bit painful.

Screwing up my courage and opening the day’s newspapers, I turned into what I assumed would be the foul smelling wind of what the press had done with Catherine Zeta-Jones' predicament and what her agent had said.

Hardly any smell at all. Most of it was great. The Sun and The Daily Mail came out astonishingly well. They both had dignified articles on the news of the circumstances and simple, accurate explanatory boxes at the side about what bipolar disorder is. The broadsheets appeared to think that their readers would be educated enough about mental illness to understand it. The Daily Express' coverage has been magnificent, with follow-up articles attractively presented and written in plain English, although I was angered by its use of the word “Rehab” in its initial headline. This seemed to me to be muddling up people affected by bipolar and Ms Zeta-Jones with people sent to rehab for drug and alcohol problems and confusing the issue for their readers who are used to seeing the term used for celebs with drug addictions.

Coming out. Being caught by the media in your private life. Battling with what used to be a hostile press. There is much to learn from the much older gay rights movement for the one in four of us who have mental health problems. We might, for instance, out some MPs. But with a press that is now getting the message, there are more than hopeful signs. Catherine Zeta-Jones' predicament has allowed some of the media to bring important issues into the open, but as always with bipolar disorder, it has come at the cost of personal suffering.