Today in Amanda Bynes: No Charges for the Driveway Fire, a History of Mental Illness, and Parents Who Are Stepping In
Amanda Bynes may currently be on a 5150 psychiatric hold so doctors can figure out just what's going on in her brain, but the good news is she won't face criminal charges for lighting a stranger's driveway on fire.
Hey, even small victories count.
However, while she'll escape punishment for the indiscretion, she can't send her lawyer packing just yet. There's still that DUI in Los Angeles and those reckless endangerment charges in NYC to contend with.
But Amanda, 27, has bigger problems. Friends are now coming out of the woodwork to claim that even when she was a teenager, she thought smoke alarms and clocks were being used to spy on her. And in later years she supposedly began sputtering a nonsense language of her own making.
"When she was living at her apartment near New York’s Times Square, neighbors spotted her wandering the halls and talking to herself in unintelligible sentences," a source said.
Some are convinced Bynes is schizophrenic, and that her Adderall use is exacerbating the illness. The ADHD drug (also a Lindsay Lohan favorite) is a notorious appetite suppressant, and insiders say Amanda's been taking it to help her achieve her bizarre stated goal of only weighing 100 pounds -- but it could also be increasing her paranoia.
Since being placed under the care of doctors this week, she's reportedly been begging for Adderall -- and been denied.
Meanwhile, her parents have hired a lawyer who's helping them file the necessary paperwork for a conservatorship that they could get as early as Friday. According to a source, they'll petition to be their daughter's "temporary proposed conservators," and they also want "control of her personal and financial affairs."
We wish them the best of luck. Man, are they gonna need it.
UPDATE: TMZ is reporting that Rick and Lynn Bynes "have just filed court documents asking a California judge to impose a conservatorship on their daughter due to her apparent mental illness." The court hearing is Friday but it may not be the slam-dunk it seems -- California has tough rules about what does and doesn't qualify for conservatorships.