Mel B says she's entering rehab for alcohol and sex addiction

Singer and "America's Got Talent" judge Melanie "Mel B" Brown says she is entering a rehab program for alcohol and sex addiction following family and relationship issues that have left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The U.K.-born Brown, 43, who now lives in California, said in a statement to the British tabloid The Sun over the weekend that working on her memoir over the last six months "has been unbelievably traumatic.” She said she is "reliving an emotionally abusive relationship and confronting so many massive issues in my life from the death of my dad to my relationship with men."

Referring to her contentious divorce from ex-husband Stephen Belafonte, a film producer she accused of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, the former Spice Girl said she has "been through more than a year of court battles which have left me financially battered and at the mercy of the legal system which is completely weighted against emotionally abused women because it's very hard to prove how someone took away all your self-respect and self-worth."

Acknowledging "drinking to numb my pain," Brown said she was "recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder" and since Aug. 9 has been under therapy that, while helping, made her "fully aware I am at a crisis point." She said she will enter "a proper therapy programme in the next few weeks, but it has to be in the UK because I am very, very British and I know that will work best for me."

The mother of three, who has a daughter each with Belafonte, comedian Eddie Murphy and first husband Jimmy Gulzar, said she wanted to "shine a light on the issue of pain, PTSD and the things men and women do to mask it," and on Sunday posted a link to the Dept. of Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD.

She also retweeted a post by her mother, Andrea Brown, in Leeds, U.K., that expressed pride in Melanie Brown's "courage to face her demons head on and deal with them. I know what hell she has been through and I know what trauma she has suffered and still suffers. Do not judge because so many people have PTSD and try and numb the pain any way they can."

Neither Belafonte, who has denied Brown's claims of abuse, nor "America's Got Talent" have commented on social media. On Sunday, Brown posted an Instagram video tagged #memories #vacation #nature, shot in slow-motion and showing her running toward Belafonte and the two younger children in a grassy field, then all holding hands and twirling in a circle.