Barton was placed on involuntary psychiatric hold last month (Jul09) after calling cops to her Hollywood home.
The actress claims she hit rock bottom after undergoing “terrible” surgery on her wisdom teeth that went wrong, just weeks before she was due to begin shooting new TV show The Beautiful Life.
Because she was forbidden to take painkillers while she worked, the actress was forced to cope with the after-effects of the operation without proper medication.
Barton tells Time Out New York magazine, “I went through a tough spot where everything compounded on me, and it was like a perfect storm, like everything was happening to me at once.”
She claims the stress led to depression and brought about her meltdown on 16 July (09). She denies she suffered a mental breakdown, but admits her ordeal was “pretty bad”.
The 24 year old explains, “I was down in the dumps about everything there for a while. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom about things and have to get the most stressed out just to feel better again. I got completely stressed out and couldn’t handle everything.”
Barton goes onto insist much of her ordeal was blown out of proportion by the press, and intensified by the scrutiny stars are placed under in Hollywood: “The funny thing is, if all this happened in New York, no one would care.”
