In January Dr. Phil received a lot of well-deserved flack for visiting Britney Spears in the hospital when she was on a mental health hold, and planning a special on his show around her, which was ultimately canceled. Phil was lambasted in the media for revealing details of Britney’s medical condition to the press, a clear violation of patient confidentiality, and Britney’s own family said that although they did ask Phil to get involved they didn’t give him permission to make public statements about her.

Then in April Dr. Phil and his producers showed incredibly poor judgment again by bailing out the ringleader in a brutal YouTube beating in which six teen girls in Florida lured a classmate to one of their homes and beat her unconscious, recording it all and posting it online. The Dr. Phil show paid over $30,000 to free the girl in order to secure an exclusive interview with her and her family. Instead of admitting their gross error in judgment, producers at the Dr. Phil show blamed the guy they sent down to Florida with the money, saying it was all his idea and he somehow went down there on his own with a lot of cash. That special was also scrapped due to media backlash.

Phil found yet another personal tragedy to exploit - his people arranged for Mindy McCready to go to rehab in exchange for all the salacious details of her breakdown. The 32 year-old country singer has faced a string of personal problems in the past few years including an addiction to painkillers that led her to forge prescriptions, abuse by an ex boyfriend, and multiple arrests. She was jailed from September to December of last year for violating probation and most recently overdosed on Ambien and vodka in an apparent suicide attempt. But Dr. Phil planned to fix everything for McCready by paying for her to go to rehab and putting her on his show to dish out his unique brand of homespun sound bites of wisdom. Luckily that’s not going to happen, though:

Mindy McCready is going back to rehab after trying to do herself in with her favorite swiggable and pharmaceutical — vodka and Ambien — and we hear Dr. Phil’s inserting himself in the whole she-bang.

TMZ has learned the troubled McCready went off the deep end late last week after getting dumped by her boyfriend and collapsed while on the phone with her mother. She downed a bottle of vods and pills in what we’re told was a “suicide attempt.”

She’s headed to Arizona for treatment, and a source says that was all Phil’s idea. We’re told he’s taken Mindy under his wing as a “personal project.” As for whether or not she’ll be on the show, time will tell.

[From TMZ]

Like his other attempts to use stories of personal tragedy to boost ratings, Dr. Phil has backed down from putting Mindy on his show. TMZ reports that reps for the show say Mindy won’t be on and state that “Dr. Phil has not treated patients one-on-one since his show went on air. Ms. McCready’s situation is private and we respect her right to privacy in a difficult time.” It’s been a while since I saw the Dr. Phil show, but he usually treats patients in groups and by dragging their families in too. It’s likely he planned to do something like that here so the defense is pretty weak.

TMZ doesn’t pull stories out of thin air like the gossip rags and they seem to have solid sources before they run with something. I would bet this was true and that Phil’s people realized they were about to enter another PR quagmire and backed down. At least McCready got free rehab out of it.

How much longer is Dr. Phil going to stay on the air? There were all sorts of stories after the Britney debacle that he was about to get canned because he had pissed off his boss, the all mighty Oprah.

Mindy McCready is shown below at “The Queen of Hearts Team participates in the 2008 WSOP Ladies Event at the Rio Hotel and Casino” on 6/8/08. She’s also shown the day before on 6/7/08. Credit: Judy Eddy / WENN. Dr. Phil is shown on 3/20/08. Credit: WENN

I’m not sure if we have that many country music loving folks here, so I generally don’t cover the Nashville scene all that much. But once in a while a crossover tale emerges, and you end up with the likes of Mindy McCready, most famous to us non-Nashvillians (is that what they’re called?) as the lady who once dated former Superman Dean Cain. She’s also had several country hits, including “Guys Do it All the Time.” McCready has lived a rather… dramatic existence the last several years. She’s been a victim of extreme domestic violence, her boyfriend tried to murder her, she had a suicide attempt when she found out she was pregnant, and has since struggled with drug and alcohol addictions. This past Friday, McCready was sentenced to a year in jail for violating her probation after she was arrested for assaulting her mother and resisting arrest – police had to use pepper spray to get her under control.

“The jail sentence should keep McCready out of the blotter for a few months, which is something of rarity. In addition to her 2004 conviction for prescription fraud, she was arrested in May 2005 on charges of drunken driving and driving on a suspended license, though only the latter charge stuck.

“Shortly after the bust, her then boyfriend and father of her son, Billy McKnight, was arrested and charged with attempting to murder McCready after a domestic dispute reached alarming heights of brutality.

“In August of the same year, the “Ten Thousand Angeles” singer, who has not released an album since 2002, was again arrested and held for 10 days after a warrant was issued in her name for parole violations. In her subsequent court appearance, McCready revealed she had attempted suicide after learning she was pregnant and had been hospitalized for an overdose of drugs and alcohol.”

[From E! News]

The really sad thing was when McCready was on Oprah, she kept talking about how she loved McKnight and still wanted to be with him and hoped they could work things out. And Oprah kept telling her she was messed up. I think she phrased it a little nicer, but it’s Oprah and she can be a hard ass, so you never know. Since that time, McCready has had several run-ins with the ex-boyfriend, who she admits she can’t stay away from. She was on probation for forging a prescription for OxyContin. She only had three more months, but didn’t make it.

“In the early morning hours of July 21, police in Fort Myers, Florida, responded to a call placed by McCready’s mother, Melody Inge. Inge told the dispatcher that her 31-year-old daughter was intoxicated and causing a ruckus at the family home. When police arrived, they found Inge with a scratch on the side of her face.

“McCready was rung up on charges of battery and resisting arrest. The ‘Guys Do It All the Time’ singer proved herself a difficult capture, refusing to be cuffed, police said. (For her part, McCready claimed she was tackled by officers while holding her 16-month-old son. The singer also claimed that she suffered a broken nose and sustained bruising during her scuffle with the cops.)

McCready failed to ease up during the booking process at the local Lee County Jail, police said, and officers were forced to pepper spray the entertainer into submission.

“She was eventually released on $1,000 bail, at which point she flew from Florida into Nashville, where she was taken into custody and booked at Williamson County Jail. She has been held in the facility without bail for her hat trick of violations: Not only did she break probation by getting arrested, but she failed to report the arrest to her probation officer and engaged in ‘assaultive behavior’ throughout the encounter.”

[From E! News]

She was sentenced to a year in the county jail for violating her probation, along with two additional years of probation and 200 hours of community service. McCready told the court she was sorry, and asked to have a chance to “make things as right as they can possibly be.” A lot of the stories written about McCready make her out to be the bad guy, and while she certainly is (in terms of what she did at her mom’s house), I also feel badly. Clearly she has some serious issues relating to being abused, and jail hasn’t – and probably won’t – address those issues. It sounds like she’s relied on drugs and alcohol to deal with it. Hopefully they will be some court-mandated counseling, too.

Picture note by JayBird: Header image of Mindy McCready performing in Nashville in June, 2005. Images thanks to PR Photos. Here’s McCready’s booking photo courtesy of the Lee County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office.