Dr. Drew Pinsky is weighing in on the Britney Spears situation ... revealing that, legally speaking, it will be near impossible for anyone to force the pop star to seek medical help for her mental illness.
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00:02 Conservatorships in California
00:03 are almost impossible to come by.
00:06 They're very difficult to get, as you mentioned, Harvey.
00:08 Another conservatorship seems almost,
00:10 I don't see how that could possibly happen.
00:12 And they've gotten more and more and more difficult
00:14 to come by as time has gone on
00:17 since her original conservatorship.
00:19 So here's what we know.
00:19 She was hospitalized for two weeks at Cedars
00:22 back in her original presentation.
00:24 That is against her will.
00:25 That is a status held
00:26 for the most severely ill psychiatric patients.
00:29 Then she went from that to conservatorship.
00:32 The conservatorship worked beautifully.
00:34 I was saying at the time that they kept her alive.
00:36 She would not have survived given the condition she was in.
00:40 And then she wanted to try off.
00:41 I also supported that.
00:43 I mean, look, she wants to try off conservatorship, fine.
00:46 It's not gonna go well.
00:47 There's going to be decompensations.
00:49 It's a nature of her illness.
00:51 And here we are.
00:52 The problem with bipolar disorder is,
00:55 amongst many things, is people lose insight.
00:57 It's called anisognosia.
00:58 It's actually a biological block
01:00 and the insight to what's happening to them,
01:02 A, and then B, if you throw substances into it,
01:05 that is just lighting it on fire.
01:08 Bipolar is kind of,
01:09 you can think of like a seizure disorder.
01:11 It's the brain goes in these cycles that are biological
01:16 and people aren't aware they're happening.
01:17 When it happens to them, it causes strange behavior,
01:19 strange thoughts, and the public is not used to seeing this.
01:23 They're going to see more as time goes on.
01:25 - Is there anything that people around Britney
01:28 could say or do that would make that apparent to her?
01:32 - No, unfortunately,
01:33 because there's often paranoia and agitation,
01:35 and if there's drug addiction or drug abuse in there
01:37 mixed with it, they certainly don't want to stop that.
01:39 They don't want to hear about that.
01:40 - You're painting a very realistic but bleak picture.
01:45 What can be done in this case?
01:47 - Again, let's remind ourselves
01:49 that with severe mental illness,
01:51 particularly when you throw substances in,
01:52 people end up on the streets.
01:55 And on the streets of Los Angeles,
01:57 they're dying at the rate of eight a day.
01:59 That's what's happening on our streets.
02:01 Just because Britney is a celebrity with resources
02:06 does not exempt her from that natural history.
02:08 That's how things go.
02:10 So unless she makes some sort of claim
02:13 that she's going to hurt herself or hurt someone else
02:15 or loses her ability to take care of herself,
02:17 she's severely, greatly disabled,
02:20 no one can really do anything.
02:22 It's the horrible thing.
02:24 You could try to do an intervention,
02:25 maybe bring a group of people, a show of force,
02:27 sometimes it's helpful,
02:29 and then urge her then to get further care.
02:32 But you've heard her,
02:33 I think we've all heard her talk about,
02:34 she was in a long-term dual diagnosis program,
02:37 did beautifully, now claims that was a program
02:39 that was abusive to her and was holding her prisoner,
02:41 which was nonsense.
02:42 (dramatic music)