Attorney: Amanda Bynes is 'seeking treatment for ongoing mental health issues'

Amanda Bynes is focusing on self care and seeking privacy, says her attorney. The news comes as the former child actress on Tuesday had posted, then deleted, a social media message that she was expecting her first child.

"Any reports that Amanda is suffering from drug or alcohol addiction issues are completely false," her attorney, David A. Esquibias, told Newsday on Wednesday. "She is seeking treatment for ongoing mental health issues. We ask for privacy during this time, and for any speculation about her personal life from the public and the media to cease so Amanda can focus on getting better."

Bynes has publicly acknowledged years of substance abuse and mental-health issues. While she has sought treatment and made progress — earning an associate degree last spring from California's Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising — she remains under a conservatorship granted to her mother in 2013. Bynes told Paper magazine in late 2018 that she had been sober for four years, and according to multiple sources, has been staying a sober-living facility.

In two Instagram posts that they quickly removed, Bynes and her purported fiance, Paul Michael, each briefly said on Tuesday that they are expecting a child together.

Per a plethora of media reports that published screenshots of the since-deleted posts, Michael had uploaded a slideshow that included an ultrasound photo labeled with Bynes' name. "Baby in the making," he wrote. Bynes, 33, posted the same ultrasound image, captioning it, "Baby on board!"

The posts were gone by Wednesday morning.

The couple's most recent remaining posts were dated March 9, with two on Michael's page. One reposted Bynes' Feb.14 photo of the couple's hands, hers with an apparent engagement ring, captioned "My Love Always." The second post had no caption and showed a different angle of the couple's hands and their rings.

Bynes' most recent post was a selfie of the couple, with Michael wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with a logo for the Lowrider clothing company. "My love," Bynes wrote of Michael, followed by the emo-inspired black heart emoji, which per Emojipedia represents "morbidity, sorrow, or a form of dark humor."

Bynes — the former child star of Nickelodeon's "All That" and "The Amanda Show" and of movies including 2010's "Easy A," her last screen work to date — had announced on Valentine's Day that she had become engaged. The following day, she posted a photo of herself and the then-unidentified Michael, writing simply, "Lover."

These posts have since been deleted, along with a Feb. 20 photo captioned "Myloveispaul" and a video in which she said, "Hey, everyone, this is Paul, my fiance. I'm so lucky. As you can see, he's drop-dead gorgeous. He's also the best person on the face of the Earth."

Upon the posts' disappearance, Michael on March 8 told In Touch magazine that the couple had broken up. "We did," he said. "I love her, though; she's my best friend." However, he insisted in a tabloid's gossip column two days later that the engagement was never off and said those specific posts had been deleted by a hacker.