DON’T leave Britney alone.
That’s the message from TV shrink Dr. Phil, who yesterday said Spears is a suicide risk and may need to be committed involuntarily to a mental hospital.
“Right now, I believe Britney is so out of control she probably couldn’t stop this if she wanted to,” Dr. Phil said on an unusual edition of the afternoon help show.
“I do think she is a suicide risk,” he said at the end of an hour-long evaluation of the troubled singer.
“I think in her heart and soul she is a loving and caring mother. But with a toxic brain, sometimes it is hard to do the reasoning.
“If you are addicted to drugs, if you are addicted to alcohol – I don’t know if she is, but there is a lot of indications that she may have that problem – then I’m not sure she could trust herself to think through this in a reasonable way.
“Maybe she needs to be involuntarily committed, she is not displaying good judgement.”
Dr. Phil, a behavioral psychologist with extensive court experience before becoming a TV personality, aired the special edition without a studio audience.
It included interviews with legal experts, the head of celebrity photo agency X17 and Spears’ former bodyguard Tony Baretto who says he has witnessed Spears abusing drugs and alcohol.
“This is a frightening situation to me, probably like it is to a lot of you and a lot of people that love Britney,” Dr. Phil said. “It’s frightening because we are watching somebody unravel, and nothing is happening to stop it.”