Mischa Barton Breaks Silence On Hospitalization

Little more than a month after returning to the Manhattan set of her new TV show,"The Beautiful Life," following her much-publicized hospitalization in mid-July,Mischa Barton has spoken out for the first time about the incident.

"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 told Time Out New York. The former "O.C." star was removed from her home last month, due to what the Los Angeles Police Department characterized as "medical issues."

"Ms. Barton was safely transferred to medical treatment for which she remains hospitalized, as per the recommendation of her doctor," her rep told MTV News in a statement last month, amid rumors of an involuntary psychiatric hold at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Barton told Time Out that her troubles started before she was scheduled to begin filming the series. She was traveling abroad and had a "terrible" wisdom-tooth removal from which she's still just recovering. "I had to get through it without proper painkillers because I couldn't take those during work," she said of the procedure. "So it's been a nightmare."

Preparing for her television return while suffering physical pain was too much for Barton. "I was down in the dumps about everything there for a while," she said. "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, and now I feel really in control."

Barton said she did not experience a nervous breakdown, but admitted that her ordeal "was pretty bad." She claimed the media made a mountain out of a molehill with their inaccurate reports. "The funny thing is, if all this happened in New York, no one would care," she said. "New York lets you be who you are, and people aren't as judgmental. I'm so glad to be back here."

At the time of her hospitalization, a friend told People.com that Barton had been "dealing with a lot of personal issues" and suggested that she picked up "some of the bad habits that had gotten out of control a couple years back."