As expected, Belle Gibson‘s Sunday night interview with 60 Minutes proved to be a talking point for the entire nation, with every major news site dissecting her answers the next day, and a significant backlash on social media.
The dust is now beginning to settle, and one prominent psychologist has spoken out, questioning the ethics of the interview, and advising Gibson to “please get some help and don’t do [any more] TV.”
As a real cancer survivor, I have one piece of advice for Belle Gibson – please get some help and don’t do anymore TV @mrpford @CanTeenAus
— Michael Carr-Gregg (@MCG58) June 28, 2015
Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg, an adolescent psychologist, Sunrise regular and cancer survivor, Tweeted the above shortly after the interview, and has since expressed dismay that it ran as it did.
It’s always a tricky business when health professionals diagnose public figures without actually ever meeting them – cc: the dude who once said Kyle Sandilands would be dead within a year – and Carr-Gregg has acknowledged as much.
“I haven’t spoken to (her) so I can’t make a diagnosis,” he said straight-up, “but I don’t think you have to be a psychologist to figure out that she’s not well.”
“It was excruciating to watch and I express some degree of disappointment that Channel 9 aired (it) because it is so patently obvious that she’s not well,” he continued. “Really, is whatever they paid her, if they paid her, enough to exploit someone like that?”
He said that doing the interview was “unwise” for Gibson, because “she’ll elicit much more negativity now than she had before,” and that he hopes 60 Minutes offered Gibson her the appropriate support to deal with the intense anger directed at her online.
On Sunday night, interviewer Tara Brown called Gibson a pathological liar, as she obfuscated about her age and refused to take responsibility for driving cancer sufferers away from traditional medicine with false claims about healthy eating.
It remains unclear whether or not she was paid for her appearance, as some have speculated.
via Daily Telegraph
