Inside Britney's Private Pain

With Her Father’s Health In Jeopardy, Britney Spears Has Hit A Frightening New Low, Pals Close To The Fragile Singer Fear.

FALL in love with taking care of yourself,” Britney Spears told her Instagram followers on April 3. Those words of advice turned out to be a tragic foreshadowing when, later that day, it was revealed that the long troubled pop princess had once again bottomed out and checked into a mental health facility.

Britney’s latest breakdown comes in the wake of a frightening health scare for her father and longtime conservator, Jamie, who suffered a ruptured colon in November that forced him to undergo emergency surgery. “That was the beginning of her downward spiral,” an insider tells Star, who points out that the warning signs were clearly apparent in January, when Britney, 37, announced she was putting her Domination residency in Las Vegas on indefinite hold because of her father’s condition. But as the months went by, the pain apparently became too much to bear. “Jamie has guided her and been her protector for more than a decade,” says the source. “It’s not surprising that Britney is having a really hard time during his illness.”