Although Mariah Carey's entry into an undisclosed New York City hospital last week was initially attributed to "exhaustion," a spokesperson for the singer revealed that Carey suffered "an emotional and physical breakdown," and remains hospitalized.

Carey's breakdown came after returning to the U.S. in mid-July after a fourteen-day, seven-city tour to promote her upcoming film, Glitter. Promotion for the film was one of a number of projects Carey had been working lately. In addition to starring in the film, she served as one of its co-producers, wrote and recorded the soundtrack and will also appear in the upcoming independent film, Wise Girls. She was also scheduled to headline MTV's twentieth anniversary bash August 1st in New York City, but her hospitalization forced her to cancel.

"With her new music and a new label and her first movie, this was meant to be a new beginning," Carey's publicist Cindi Berger told Us Weekly. "But she was burning the candle at both ends, working around the clock. She just worked too hard."

As for Carey's posts on her official Web site, which have since been removed, Berger said, "Obviously she did that when she was very tied, working on no sleep."

"I'm trying to understand things in life right now and so I really don't feel that I should be doing music right now," Carey wrote last week. "What I'd like to do is just take a little break or at least get one night of sleep without someone popping up about a video or a thing -- where all I really want to do is just be me."

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