Does Britney Spears Have Dementia? Details On Father Jamie's Claims She's Suffering From Mental Illness
Hopefully, this isn't true.
Getty As the #FreeBritney saga continues, a new documentary will examine Jamie Spears's claims about his daughter's mental health.
"The Battle for Britney: Fans, Cash and a Conservatorship" is the BBC's answer to Hulu's "Framing Britney Spears." The BBC doc follows BAFTA-winning journalist Mobeen Azhar as he looks into the truth behind the conservatorship.
Does Britney Spears have dementia?
According to court documents from 2008 that recently resurfaced, Britney's father Jamie Spears claimed in the past that Britney, 39, is suffering from dementia and therefore needs to be under a general conservatorship.
But is that the truth — or is it a way for him to keep her (and her money) under his thumb?
Jamie first claimed that Britney has dementia in 2008.
He did not seem to expand on these claims in the paperwork, though, and it's never been revealed if this is something Spears has been formally diagnosed with.
However, this is a source of debate for Britney fans.
Azhar, the journalist behind " The Battle for Britney," told Express, “I think it seems far-fetched, particularly when early-onset dementia gets progressively worse. She was diagnosed with dementia, according to the court papers. That would have been years ago and up until a couple of years ago, she was still doing her Las Vegas residency."
Spears's ability to perform at the intensity she has is a common point made by the Free Britney movement followers who believe Spears's dementia diagnosis is a plot to keep the performer under her father's control.
“There is no way any dementia patient is going on world tours, doing Vegas residencies, is learning 27 back-to-back combo numbers, full choreography. No honey, that is not happening,” fan Hayley Herms told The Sun.
Spears having dementia allows her conservator to have more control over her.
As the legal paperwork revealed, Spears having dementia would allow whoever's in charge of her conservatorship to have more power over her than any other type of conservatorship would.
If true, this may have been why Jamie wanted to claim that his daughter is suffering from the illness.
"Probate Code Section 2356.5 allows conservators to request particularly strong powers if the conservative allegedly suffers from dementia. If the conservatee has a dementia-related illness, the conservator may be empowered to place the conservatee in a locked-door institution and to authorize the administration of medications 'appropriate to the care of dementia,'" says the document.
Spears has been known for her erratic social media posts.
Fans have long suspected that something is up with Spears' mental health, and many of their concerns stem from the kinds of posts that she makes on Instagram.
She's known for sharing the same photo more than once and writing captions that don't always make sense, and people seem to be split on whether she should remain under a conservatorship or not.
Either way, her Instagram certainly seems to insinuate that something is up.
Also, a TikTok user recently made a video, which went viral before being deleted from the platform, explaining why he thinks that the cyberbullying of Spears needs to stop.
The user, Mars Monroe, claimed that Spears has, "zero rights or control over her career and life." He says that she is completely complicit to her handlers.
There are others that seem to agree, with some sources claiming that these posts that fans have found so bizarre aren't even her own and that her handlers are the ones who are really writing them.
Monroe also claimed in the video that Spears had an entire "forbidden" album back in the early 2000's that she was not allowed to ever release, due to it going more into what she was really going through in her life.
Strangely, Monroe seems to have disappeared from TikTok without a trace.
"[Monroe] had made a post in late june about how he’d been receiving mysterious texts and calls from anonymous phone numbers," one person baffled by his disappearance wrote on Reddit in r/BritneySpears. "They would be threats and weird breathing and music, things like “we will find you”.
Spears made headlines for burning down her home gym.
In a broadcast on Instagram Live in April 2020, Spears casually revealed that she had accidentally burned her home gym down, though no one had been hurt in the incident.
"Hi guys, I'm in my gym right now. I haven't been in here for like six months because I burnt my gym down, unfortunately," Spears said. "I had two candles, and yeah, one thing led to another, and I burned it down."
However, the strangest part about the incident is that Spears' camp came back and denied what the singer had said.
They said that she had never burned down her gym and that there was something that happened with candles, but nothing even close as to what Spears had originally described had happened.
Britney seems to be taking back her narrative.
In an Instagram post, the singer hit back (baby, one more time) at the supposedly well-meaning films addressing fan concerns.
"These documentaries are so hypocritical … they criticize the media and then do the same thing????? Damn … I don’t know y’all but I’m thrilled to remind you all that although I’ve had some pretty tough times in my life … I’ve had waaaayyyy more amazing times in my life and unfortunately my friends … I think the world is more interested in the negative!!!!"
But that's not the last we'll hear from Brit.
In fact, in June, she'll speak to the probate court about the conservatorship case.
Hopefully putting her own voice out there for her own interests is exactly what she needs.
But does Spears have dementia? It's not clear.
So far, Spears herself has yet to confirm or speak out about Jamie's claims that she has dementia, and there's no clear evidence pointing to her suffering from the illness.
For now, we just don't have an answer to this question, but hopefully, everything is okay with Spears and she's staying safe.
It makes sense that fans have been concerned but hopefully, her next hearing will help bring her to where she needs to be.
Nicole Pomarico is an entertainment and lifestyle writer whose work has appeared in Cosmo, Us Weekly, Refinery29, and more.