Remember Mischa Barton, the hard-partying, hollow-faced DUI arrestee who lost any semblance of normality long ago?

Well guess what? Turns out she’s mentally unwell. Mischa Barton has been placed under a 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold and taken to the same hospital that Britney Spears was after her meltdown last year. It’s thought that action was taken after Mischa made a 911 call.

The good news is that, like Britney Spears, Mischa Barton is now getting the help she clearly needs. The bad news is that, like Britney Spears, she might now make a rubbish album and go on a dead-eyed global tour.

The effect that The O.C had on the planet has been pretty much unilaterally terrible. It has spawned all manner of tedious clones like Gossip Girl and 90210. It has spawned all manner of tedious reality show rip-offs, like The Hills and Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County. It has spawned eight nightmarish-sounding novelisations. And there’s a good chance that it helped to spawn some of Mischa Barton’s mental health problems, too.

Of course, it might not have done – but if Mischa Barton hadn’t been on The O.C then we probably wouldn’t be writing about her meltdown now, so let’s just pretend that it did.

But anyway, yes, Mischa Barton has been sectioned and she’s currently undergoing psychiatric observation at an LA hospital. The San Jose Mercury reports:

Mischa Barton was picked up at her residence by police Wednesday and placed under an involuntary psychiatric hold (also known as a 5150), before she was transferred to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Barton made a 911 call because of what officials termed a “medical issue.” A rep for the actress would not comment on her medical condition.

As upsetting as this news is, it isn’t exactly a surprise. Mischa Barton has flirted with trouble ever since leaving The O.C, whether she was being taken to hospital for an illness that everyone assumed was drug-related or getting arrested for driving while off her chuff on booze and pot or – worst of all – moving to London and hanging out with the Geldof sisters until her face went from ‘glamorous and charming’ to ‘an unflattering portrait of the imagined offspring of Nico and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry drawn in mascara on a wet napkin by a nervous toddler’.

Maybe details of Mischa Barton’s condition will emerge in the coming days and weeks, or maybe they won’t. If they don’t, then that’s fair enough – Mischa can keep her head down and get well again, and we can all go back to forgetting that she used to be famous. It sounds like an easy enough compromise to us.

The saddest thing about this, though, is that Mischa Barton was due to attend the premiere of her new movie Homecoming last night, but her condition prevented it. That’s a shame, because if Mischa Barton turned up to the premiere, it would have been the glitziest event that the Hounslow B&Q car park had ever seen.

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