Troubled pop icon Britney Spears was rushed to hospital in an ambulance early on Thursday morning for the second time this month for an involuntary mental health evaluation, United States media reported.
Spears was taken to the UCLA Medical Centre at about 1.30am local time and was to be placed on a 5150 hold, the involuntary confinement of a person deemed a danger to themselves or others, celebrity website TMZ.com said.
A psychiatrist treating the singer contacted Los Angeles police to set the events in motion, TMZ said, citing ”law-enforcement sources”.
A Los Angeles Fire Department ambulance transporting the 26-year-old singer was escorted by dozens of police on motorcycles, while a police helicopter hovered overhead, according to a Los Angeles Times account.
The operation appeared to have been ”carefully planned over a period of time”, the Times said, with a motorcade the length of a football field surrounding the pop star and keeping photographers and onlookers at bay.
Spears was told of her impending confinement by her psychiatrist and did not resist when paramedics arrived and placed her on a gurney, TMZ said.
The psychiatrist told police of concerns about her reckless driving and erratic behaviour, the website said.
Spears had not slept since Saturday, it said.
The troubled singer was stripped of access to her two young boys at the beginning of the month, after another hospital drama.
During that incident Spears was wheeled out of her home on a stretcher following a stand-off that began when she reportedly refused to release her two children, Sean Preston (2) and Jayden James (1), to ex-husband Kevin Federline’s bodyguard.
Spears was taken to the Cedars Sinai Medical Centre for mental evaluation before she discharged herself two days later.
The exact reasons for Spears’s admission to hospital have not been revealed although speculation has raged that the singer is suffering from a long-standing psychological illness.
Spears, one of the most successful pop stars of her generation, has been locked in the custody feud with Federline since the couple separated in 2006.
A judge limited the pop star’s access to her children in October after she failed to submit to random drug testing as demanded at an earlier hearing where the court ruled Spears was a ”habitual and continuous drug user”.
Her latest attempt to regain visitation rights to her two sons was rejected last week after she failed to appear for a Los Angeles court hearing, officials said. — AFP
