Mischa Barton opens up about 'breakdown'

Former "The O.C." star Mischa Barton has opened up about her 2009 involuntary psychiatric hold at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

"It was a full-on breakdown," she says in the new issue of People magazine, out Friday. "I was under enormous pressure."

Barton, 27, had blamed the hold on a fight with nurses following a hospital visit for a wisdom-tooth extraction.

She said in reality she had blacked out under a sedative shortly after her parents attempted an intervention. Hospitalized, she was placed in the psychiatric ward after threatening to kill herself.

Says Barton now, "I was never suicidal. I was just overworked and depressed. But one slip of the tongue in a heightened moment and you find yourself in that situation."

Barton, who owns a London boutique and says she is at work on movie projects and a television pilot, reflected, "I've learned a lot. I'm stronger now and excited for what's ahead."