The murders of Arturo Gatti, possibly by his 23-year-old ex-stripper wife, and of Steve McNair by his 20-year-old lover, may reflect yet another sign that more Americans than we know —especially younger Americans — are losing their sense of self and, with it, their psychological and moral bearings.  

Certainly, crimes of passion are nothing new.  As has always been true, the killers of Gatti and McNair had to have had extreme life stories with major psychological fault lines reaching back, quite possibly, to childhood.  But in both cases, the victims were famous men who may well have offered the women in their lives temporary and fragile shelter from deep, unresolved questions about whether they could exist independently or would crumble into nothingness without their connections to fame and fortune. It is often those who feel dead themselves who take the lives of others.

Some may think it’s too big a leap to draw any connection between a lack of respect for life and the artificial, Internet-based, technology-fueled existences that too many of today’s teens and twenty-somethings have lived, but I’m not so sure.  I think that the kind of existential panic — the panic of having nothing real at one’s core — that can lead a young woman to murder her famous lover, rather than lose him, is a distant cousin of posting videos on YouTube of staged beatings and the deconstruction of real lives and relationships into profiles, IMs and tweets.

In a world that worships reality TV parents who turn their children into entertainment automatons and a psychologically disturbed pop star whose celebrity was initially forged through enslavement to his sadistic father, respect for one’s own life and that of others can start to erode.  Gaining fame and saving face on Facebook is what matters, and the loss of image can feel like the loss of everything.  I hope I’m wrong.  I hope that cases of extreme violence are now just the same as they always were — outlying cases that are no predictor of anything about the rest of us.  

But as a psychiatrist who has made it part of my life’s work to resist dismissing my instincts, I now sense something ominous about our culture reflected in the worst deeds of the most violent among us.  I fear we are at risk for losing respect for one another and for human life.  I fear our fragile God-given capacity for empathy is under siege. I fear that in obsessing over “Blanket” Jackson (and I feel a little disturbed by even writing his preposterous name), who was dangled over a railing by a father who may not have fathered him at all, we open the door to outlandish acts of dramatic violence that would make for decent psychological thrillers, but are now the stuff of what we call “real” life.

British reality TV star Jade Goody, who appeared on the show ‘Big Brother’ in 2002, is turning her death into reality television.  Goody suffers from terminal cervical cancer and is making a show about her impending demise.  Recently, she wed an ex-con named Jack Tweed, in a televised ceremony, which included bridesmaids who had shaved their heads (to mimic Goody’s hair loss from chemotherapy).  Tweed was allowed by officials to stay out past his house arrest curfew, imposed after his 18-month jail sentence for attacking a teenager with a golf club.

Television can do very good things, and it can do very bad things.  This is a very bad thing, and Goody is doing no service to herself, her two sons (ages 4 and 5) or the public.  Her decision to televise her demise turns what should be private moments between Goody, her children and her “husband” and her Maker (if she believes in God) into entertainment. 

It dehumanizes her, deprives her children of the certain knowledge that life and death and family and love are greater than fame, and injures every person who struggles to make sense of our mortality, rather than distorting it with the lens of a camera and rendering it absurd.

If you want to know why some young people have no reluctance to tape beatings and air them on YouTube, take a look at Jade Goody (and the reprehensible producers of her series).

If you want to know why we have an epidemic of character pathology—including extreme narcissism—gripping this nation, take a look at Jade Goody.

If you want to know why real empathy is in short supply, too often replaced by a thin, synthetic veneer of concern for others, no deeper than applause, take a look at Jade Goody.

Turning death into a make-believe circus of photo ops, paydays (Goody reportedly received $2.2 million for the media rights to her wedding) and fake pathos doesn’t raise cancer awareness, as Goody claims.  It buries it.  Cancer is about moments behind closed doors, about private thoughts late in the night, about quiet courage to face suffering, about tears shed over concerns for oneself and one’s children that are unspeakable, except to those we love, for real.

Goody has apparently defended her reality series because it will provide money to raise her two children.  She could have left them something else:  The certain knowledge that they mattered more than fame, that they should never sell their souls to the highest bidder, that being alive on the face of this great planet means coming to terms with death, not denying it or trivializing it by turning it into a taped, partly faked spectacle or last ditch try for fame.

Nope, there’s nothing good about this at all.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com or e-mail him at info@keithablow.com.

With 3-year-old Caylee Anthony missing for more than two months, her mother Casey is being bailed out of jail for $500,000 by Sacramento bounty hunter Leonard Padilla.

Padilla says his motive is to use his many years of experience tracking down criminals to learn enough from Casey to find the little girl.

It isn’t surprising that Padilla’s quest has captured the imagination of the media.  His name is now known from coast-to-coast. The drama of a black-hatted, toothpick chewing cowboy riding into town to break open a case that police haven’t been able to crack sounds like a made-for-TV movie, or maybe the launch of a reality TV series.

The trouble is that the drama now unfolding according to Padilla’s script is encroaching on a very real investigation. And it feels like entertainment eclipsing truth, clouding the search for Caylee, rather than focusing it.

This is a particularly unwelcome event in the context of searching for a little girl who we pray could still be alive. Because successful investigations require an obsessive commitment to separating fact from fantasy, in a quest for the truth. And that pure motivation can be contaminated by a desire to court an audience and maintain their interest.

As a forensic psychiatrist I worry that Casey Anthony will be less motivated to tell authorities what she really knows about the disappearance of her toddler once she is free to take center stage outside a prison, in the public eye.  For someone who has the ability to spin tall tales in service to self-preservation, perhaps without feeling guilt, the making of a 24-hour-a-day TV drama out of a real tragedy could free her to fictionalize even more. It could embolden her to conclude that nothing has genuine meaning in the context of this story—not the suffering of her daughter, nor the call of her own conscience.

Sometimes the truth emerges because the world seems to be dark and unyielding without it, as it must have seemed to Anthony before Padilla rode into town. Now, the days can speed by like a DVD spinning, projecting images that have little to do with reality, other than providing a refuge from it.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Recently, two Montreal psychiatrists Drs. Ian and Joel Gold, who are also brothers, revealed the clinical histories of five patients they said suffered from a new condition: “The Truman Show Delusion.” The patients believed their lives had ceased being spontaneous and were being scripted and broadcasted as reality TV shows to viewers around the world.

The name of this new condition derives from the 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey, “The Truman Show.” In the film, Carrey’s character, Truman Burbank is a happy-go-lucky guy – until he finds out his entire life is the subject of a reality TV show, his friends are actors and there are hidden cameras everywhere.

Psychiatrists have long known that psychosis can include “ideas of reference,” in which patients believe they are the subjects of intense special interest by others, including strangers. But the Gold brothers correctly noted in their patients the belief had gone global and specifically involved the notion that others knew of them because they had essentially become stars of their own TV shows.

While these patients are the extreme, I’ve noticed elements of the same breaking with reality (in favor of TV-inspired fiction) in several patients, too. For example, a young man I recently treated dismissed my concern that his grades were plummeting, his family relationships were straining and he had been arrested for driving under the influence by stating, “Yeah, but I’m kind of like that guy in that show, the one who works in the restaurant, who’s got his whole life coming down on him, but ends up making it all happen for himself, anyhow.”

I actually had to remind him that that actor was playing a role, while on the other hand, he was living a real life. I reminded him of this many times during our work together.

In these cases, there has been a ceding of the person’s own life story to the notion that it’s all a drama, all entertainment. A DUI arrest thereby becomes an episode in a story that doesn’t really touch its protagonist, because it’s all part of an act, anyhow.

Perhaps the data suggesting that self-esteem in young people is increasing, as their performance levels on aptitude tests actually decline, is also linked to this phenomenon. The scores don’t matter. Truth doesn’t matter. Perception matters. And that detachment from oneself and others increasingly feels, to some of my patients, a lot like watching a reality TV show.

This concern about the bending of reality went national in this country in an unlikely place: Presidential politics. Senator John McCain’s advertisement linking Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears (whether or not you agree with the idea) suggested that Obama is a candidate merely playing a candidate–like that Escher drawing of a disembodied hand drawing a hand, with no end to the fantasy.

McCain’s assertion that Obama is “acting,” not genuine, occurs against the backdrop of the mortgage bubble bursting and the banking crisis unfolding. That’s why his advertisement may have hit home. We Americans are learning the hard way what happens when our institutions bend reality.

One thing is for certain: A delusion cannot be maintained forever. The truth always wins.

That’s why the Gold brothers were talking about their patients, not fascinating, happy folks they had met on the street. Ultimately, the price of pretending is psychological pain. And, always, the road back to well-being is a road that ends in coping with reality and making one’s life or one’s nation everything it can truly – truthfully – be.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.