Britney and Adnan at lunch earlier yesterday
According to the many, many articles about this available today, Britney’s family and her new psychiatrist have put her on a psychiatric hold for 72 hours at UCLA medical center. She was admitted to the hospital at 1:30 am this morning. This was done after she was witnessed driving erratically around her neighborhood, having stayed up for over a day and refusing to take her medication.

Britney has reportedly been undergoing treatment for bipolar disorder. There were rumors yesterday that she attempted suicide, but TMZ and The LA Times report that those rumors are false and that “it was apparent that the operation had been carefully planned over a period of time.”

The route to the hospital was blocked off to all paparazzi vehicles and The LA Times says that “The line of emergency vehicles stretched longer than a football field.”

Britney’s mother, her friend Sam Lufti, her psychiatrist, her boyfriend Adnan Ghalib and her assistant/faux cousin Alli Sims were all at the house when she was escorted away.

TMZ has more details of the incident, and says that Britney wasn’t resistant to the intervention, which was planned ahead of time and managed to shield Britney from photographers at a vulnerable time:

TMZ has learned the plan to get Britney into UCLA Medical Center had been hatched for days — it was aborted last night, but executed just minutes ago. And we’re told the plan was so intricate the FAA had cleared airspace in route to the hospital.

Back at her house, Britney’s psychiatrist told her she was going to the hospital. Her response was, “Is something wrong?” She was not resistant. She made hot chocolate and waited before paramedics arrived and placed her on a gurney.

We’re told the psychiatrist felt her condition had deteriorated. Britney had not slept since Saturday — a day and half longer than she stayed up in recent memory.

The reason she’s at UCLA is her new treating psychiatrist practices out of that medical center.

We’re told during her initial 72-hour stay she cannot be forced to take medication against her will. If, however, she refuses to take meds, the plan is for the the psych to go to court and have Britney held for an additional 14 days, during which time he can administer proper medications.

And get this ironic twist — Lynne Spears and Adnan drove to the Medical Center in the same car. A source tells us when Lynne found out Britney was being committed, she blamed it on Sam and was extremely agitated. When Brit heard that, she screamed to her mother, “Shut the hell up.”

[From TMZ]

Britney’s last hospitalization was on January 3 following a standoff with police when she refused to handover her youngest son for a scheduled visit with his father. She has since lost all visitation rights with her two boys and is only permitted to speak to them over the phone.

Britney is clearly affected by the crush of paparazzi who document her every move when she leaves the house. She has been behaving oddly and speaking in a British accent, and if you watch the videos of her interacting with photographers a lot of them are British, including her boyfriend Adnan Ghalib. There have been theories that she suffers from a type of “Stockholm Syndrome,” which is a psychological disorder that occurs when kidnap victims start to identify with their captors.

When you watch the videos of the paparazzi who surround Britney, you can see how it might be an environment that would make someone lose touch with reality. I’m not placing any blame here, she courts the press too and she’s clearly unstable, but this is a very disturbed person who has been exhibiting out of control behavior for a while. It seems she would have a much better chance at recovery if she could start over in another country or a more remote location where she can get some peace and quiet. A hospital in California where her every move will be leaked to the press is a start, but it doesn’t seem like enough for her at this point.