Everyone was overjoyed when Bobby Brown announced to the public last weekend that his daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, was now “awake” after spending almost three months in a medically-induced coma. Click here if you missed it! However, Brown’s comments were shortly after contradicted by Bobbi Kristina’s grandmother, Cissy Houston, who shared with People that although her granddaughter was no longer in a medically-induced coma, but “she has ‘global and irreversible brain damage,’ according to doctors and remains unresponsive.
We were all wishing and praying for a miracle for Bobbi Kristina, and when Cissy’s statement was released, it sure doused our spirits.
So, why was Bobby Brown and Cissy Houston’s perception of Bobbi Kristina’s real situation different? A psychiatry expert gave a possible answer to this question that so many may have asked, and told TheWrap that Bobby is “clearly in denial” about his daughter’s condition.
“At this point, he’s clearly in denial about what’s going on,” Lawrence Genen MD MBA, a psychiatrist and diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, said. “Obviously she is still alive there, but what degree is she really [alive]? And the longer you remain ambiguous, it really does delay the natural grieving process.”
“It’s easy to conflate the desire and that hope to see some sign of the person you once knew and confuse a movement or a reflex effect [with a sign] that the person is in there,” Genen noted. “Their body may be there, but their mind is really gone.”
“I think any parent ultimately wants to protect their child,” Genen said. “If you are experiencing guilt, maybe having been an absentee father, combined with the inherent desire to protect your child, I think that’s probably going to make it that much more difficult to let go and accept that your child may actually be effectively gone.”
Bobbi Kristina Brown, the only daughter that Bobby Brown and deceased music artist Whitney Houston had together, was found face-down and unresponsive in the bathtub of her Georgia residence on Jan. 31. Click here if you missed it! She was later transferred from Emory University Hospital to a medical rehabilitation facility last month according to media reports. Click here if you missed it!
