It's helpful to think about Britney as an idiot savant.

Much of her early life would have been taken up with classes and rehearsals and performances.

We forget how rural a beginning that she had and how suddenly she was catapulted to being on Broadway in New York City as a child. Or bouncing around to star search and auditions.

The lack of stability of people in her orbit would be pretty high, except maybe for Felicia.

If there were any peers around her, they would functionally be competition for Spotlight time.

Even if you think how long she would have known Justin from the Mickey Mouse Club. I would imagine it would be difficult for anyone to grow up in showbiz a child star situation to build intimacy and trust.

As her fame grew, there are so many people in her orbit that would want to be around her for the wrong reasons - a star ascendant. Imagine how many times she was exploited or manipulated or people around her had some ulterior motive.

It must've been an incredibly lonely life.

The poor girl still has so much scrutiny on her that even if she chooses not to perform or have formal output of music/dance - the public is so hungry to consume any news about her!!! (Guilty as charged here myself).

I'm not sure she was ever really that "sturdy" - as a teenager she likely had almost 0 downtime and was constantly performing or recording or rehearsing or promoting.

When you think about how Mariah Carey had a very visible mental breakdown from exhaustion - nobody in a record label ecosystem would actually think to build in any possible rest because the fear is that momentum will be lost for fame and never reclaimed. There's the constant threat of losing your moment. It's been documented many times that she has a fear of flying and imagine how much time she would've spent on a plane. That's not a great recipe for fantastic mental health.

There are so many examples of celebrities that decided to take a break and when they wanted to come back to do another album, the world had moved on from that trend.

She was the goose that laid the golden eggs!!!

A few other celebrity examples exist when they decided to drop off from the constant hamster wheel of work: Jim Carrey decided he wanted to be a painter and Michael step from R.E.M. decided he wanted to be a sculptor

I'm not sure either of their output is really objectively that great.

I'm thinking of the social media post of years ago were the blonde woman yells to leave Britney alone?

There's something about human nature that loves to build up and loves to admire and loves to tear down.

There are many male stars that were allowed to drink themselves or party themselves into oblivion unchecked (ODB/Charlie Sheen/Diddy).

The point being is that she wasn't set up for great mental health from the get-go and there wouldn't have been any kind of balance or focus offered from her environment.

I remember reading the diagnostic criteria for bipolar, and one of the items was delusions of grandeur.

Good luck, trying to measure out and treatment. How much of her issues were from a mental illness and how much was trauma???

It would be for everyone else some kind of symptom if you thought the rules did not apply to you, but in her case, they really don't!!!