Is Britney headed for a tragedy because she's a celebrity? Would any ordinary person with major mental issues have been released from a respected psychiatric facility just six days after they were committed by a court order?
Britney's exasperated parents are terrified. "We believe her [Brit's] life is presently at risk," they said in a statement that also pointed out that their daughter was released over the recommendation of her treating psychiatrist.
Shrinks that I talked to are also aghast at this new turn in the Britney saga. "I'm appalled that they let her go" Dr. Carole Lieberman told me. "As a psychiatrist, I know that there is no way that she could have been stabilized in six days. Nonetheless, her celebrity status does seem to have gotten her "special" treatment — that is now putting her life in danger." Let me point out that Dr. Lieberman actually happens to be a member of the clinical faculty of psychology at UCLA Medical Center where Britney was actually treated, and she still feels this way.
"It's an outrage. I would love to know who made that medical decision. It's one of the worst things that could happen to her," clinical psychologist Dr. Judy Kurianski tells me.
"Any patient of mine who drank and drove repeatedly and who had been hospitalized involuntarily twice within weeks and who had extreme stressors, like the loss of custody of one's children, would not be leaving my hospital in six days, if I could help it," adds Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and author of Living the Truth.
What should have happened to Britney according to all these experts:
She needed to have been held in the hospital for a minimum of 30 days, just to clear her body of all the alcohol and drugs — prescription or otherwise — that she may have been imbibing. Apparently it would have taken that long for her brain chemistry to even return to "normal" so the pros could actually evaluate what real mental illness she might have.
And Britney was in wicked bad shape when she arrived at the hospital — throwing such wild tantrums she had to be restrained in a padded room, according to Star magazine.
The popwreck admitted at the hospital that she had been taking Adderall, a drug which gives you a high and curbs appetite, and Star reported she was even taking prescription thyroid medications also to lose weight, plus Prozac and who knows what else. Apparently, certain drug combos can actually cause behavior that mimics mania.
Britney may not be bipolar after all, she just may have taken such a mix of dangerous substances for such a long time that they basically made her do crazy things.
But Brit will never know now, nor will her parents or even her psychiatrist. There's a good possibility that because she's a star, and a star who was probably a disruptive pain in the butt at the hospital, that she's now back driving the streets of LA with her paparazzo boyfriend and pack of paparazzi behind her.
It's a huge loss for Britney since psychiatric disorders are so treatable, according to Dr. Ablow. He stressed to me that he doesn't treat Brit but he's not hopeful for her now:
"If she has deep feelings about being controlled and manipulated in life by the people who are then made your financial conservators (like dad Jamie Spears) she may feel like she can't escape from the cage. If you feel these people have never respected you as a person, you may also feel you have no life of your own. When people have been denied their own hopes and dreams, they lose faith that they will ever be free to live as they want and they give up."
In other words, message to Jamie and Lynne Spears: If you love your daughter, now get two "neutral" conservators, and since a hospital won't hold her, see if you can get a 100% Britney sympathetic psychiatrist/babysitter who can treat her.
What else can you do?