To answer the fateful question we posed yesterday, Kanye West is not OK, hun. Hospitalised at UCLA Medical Centre, following a five-day stretch of political outbursts, cancelled concerts and Instagram spamming, the rapper’s erratic behaviour is thought to be the result of severe sleep deprivation.
While the news is equal parts sad and slightly terrifying – the idea that our own brains and bodies could betray us in such a way after one too many all-nighters doesn’t bear thinking about – it doesn’t seem to have stopped people from slagging Kanye off.
Click on the Kanye West trend on Twitter and, while there plenty of fans offering prayers for Kanye, there are just as many comments labelling him a ‘nutter’, ‘crazy’ and ‘schizo’. Then there are the memes, talk of the Kardashian curse (supposedly no man can survive the klan) and general banter about the rapper’s condition that definitely wouldn’t be tolerated if it was someone else.
So what’s to blame? Is the problem that, like when Kanye’s wife Kim Kardashian was held at gunpoint, people feel his celebrity status keeps him protected enough that they can say what they like about him? Or that by putting himself out there in the public eye he’s ‘asking for it’? Or, perhaps, is it because Kanye West is a man and we are still failing to take men’s mental health seriously enough?
The truth is probably a combination of the three, which enabled us to make light of his situation, before a medical evaluation elevated Kanye’s whole situation from ‘is he in on the joke?’ to ‘this is no laughing matter’. With 2.7 million men in England alone suffering from mental health problems, we need to stop taking the piss and instead keep talking about the fact that men – no matter how rich, famous or powerful – are at serious risk of affecting their psyche, because they feel like they can't stop and ask for help.
Maybe, just maybe, Kanye's tragic plight will push men's mental health issues into the spotlight. In the meantime, here's hoping the rapper gets the help and support he needs, from all angles.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.