R.I.P. Mindy McCready and the "curse" of Celebrity Rehab

Country singer Mindy McCready died at her home Sunday of what authorities are calling a self-afflicted gunshot wound to the head. For the past few years, she's been known mostly for her appearance on Dr. Drew Pinsky's Celebrity Rehab . McCready is the fifth in a cumulative cast of forty-three to have died.  (The show ran for five seasons before the celebrity angle was dropped.)

So obviously the show is cursed.

As much as I hated the show for its exploitation of addicts for entertainment purposes, the idea that somehow the show is "cursed," bothers me almost as much. Tracie Egan Morrissey wrote a great piece  linking to statistics that show addiction's high relapse rate, and its mortality, but that doesn't mean the show itself is off the hook:

Relapse rates for addiction for people who experience a period of recovery range from 50% to 90%, and are comparable to the relapse rates of other chronic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, or asthma. And like diabetes, addiction is a treatable disease that involves behavioral changes and constant management. 

In Dr. Drew's defense, addiction recovery rates are depressingly low; five deaths out of 43 people is, unfortunately, not as unusually high as it sounds. And the silver lining here — if we must find one — is that these high-profile tragedies really shine a spotlight on how dangerous and serious addiction is.

However, the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) does list some principles for effective treatment, of which Celebrity Rehab falls short. For instance, "Remaining in treatment for an adequate period of time is critical." CR cast members were in treatment for only a couple of weeks—and they were compensated financially for their time. Also: "An individual's treatment and services plan must be assessed continually and modified as necessary to ensure that it meets his or her changing needs." And it would seem that the treatment offered on CR failed to do this, since being on TV, and playing out very private issues in front of cameras only fed into that "celebrity narcissism" that Dr. Drew identified as being so problematic.