Doctors extend Spears’ hospital stay by 14 days

LOS ANGELES — Britney Spears got her stay in a psychiatric ward extended Sunday, as doctors decided to keep her hospitalized an additional 14 days, someone close to the pop star told the Associated Press.

Spears was to be released from UCLA Medical Center’s psychiatric hospital Sunday, but doctors and a medical officer at the ward determined that she should remain, said the person, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Spears was committed Thursday for a 72-hour hold for evaluation. Paramedics, flanked by a police escort of about a dozen officers on motorcycles, in cars and a helicopter, took Spears from her home to the psychiatric hospital before dawn.

To extend her stay, hospital staff members cited a section in the state law that allows patients to be retained for medical treatment if they are found to be gravely disabled or a danger to themselves or others, the person said.

A UCLA Medical Center spokesman did not immediately return a phone message Sunday seeking comment. Calls to attorneys Sorrell Trope, Spears’ personal lawyer, and Andrew Wallet, also were not returned.

Court Commissioner Reva Goetz ruled the day after Spears was hospitalized — and following a year of increasingly bizarre public behavior — that she needed to have someone else take over her personal and financial affairs.

Slideshow: Celebrity Sightings Goetz named Spears’ father, James Spears, as her conservator. Goetz also named Spears father and Wallet as conservators of the pop star’s estate. A court creates a conservatorship when it concludes a person no longer can care for themselves or their personal and financial affairs.

In placing Spears in one, Goetz also issued a restraining order, keeping Sam Lutfi, the pop star’s friend and sometime manager, away from her.

Goetz also granted the conservator access to Spears’ medical records, as well as the right to restrict her visitors and to provide her with around-the-clock security. She ordered a hearing Monday to review the matter.

Spears’ current hospitalization is the second this year for the 26-year-old singer, who has been in spiral of bizarre behavior since November 2006, when she filed for divorce from Kevin Federline, the father of her sons, 1-year-old Jayden James and 2-year-old Sean Preston.

Since her breakup with Federline, Spears has been seen at public events in short skirts and without underwear, has shaved her head bald, run over a photographer’s foot with her car, left the scene of a fender bender, flogged another car with an umbrella and abandoned a car in traffic when it had a flat tire.

Recently, she was seen sitting on a sidewalk, holding her pet dog and crying.

Spears was hospitalized on Jan. 3 after police were called to her home when she refused to return her children to Federline following a visit. That episode resulted in her losing custody of her sons.