SHE DID IT HER WAY –
March 30, 2025 – With her wire-rimmed round glasses, long brown hair and gap-toothed grin, Lovato, 32, skipped, giggled, and danced beside a purple dinosaur on the popular kids show Barney & Friends at just 8 years old. But even though she was publicly singing about counting kittens and learning shapes on the PBS program, she was secretly thinking about dying by suicide.
Next came Disney-star fame with roles in As the Bell Rings, Sonny with a Chance and the Camp Rock movie franchise, where she got the chance to sing to an even bigger crowd of fans and found herself juggling professional and social pressures that led to her using substances to cope.
In and out of at least five rehabilitation programs — “Every single time I walked back into a treatment center, I felt defeated,” Lovato said in a conversation with Dr. Charlie Shaffer at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Center for Youth Mental Health in June 2024 — Lovato has poured her pain into performances and song lyrics.
