The end result is that we're ceaselessly pressured to define ourselves by what we consume, what we own, how we look. Among the welter of research backing such claims, are a series of experiments by the US psychologist Douglas Kenrick. In one, students were shown slides of models and 'ordinary' people. For both male and female students, viewing models from their own sex resulted in a lowering of mood. Exposure to stunners of the opposite sex on the other hand, either raised their spirits or had no effect.
Social comparison is the engine of our celebrity and media-saturated culture.
By the age of 12, the average American has watched 200,000 adverts. Newspapers and magazines too are complicit. We all, somewhere, fail by comparison. They, it seems by The Priory's A-list turnout, are no happier than the rest of us. None of this however, should obscure the fact that those at the bottom of the social pile are still far more likely to suffer mental illness than anyone else.