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Demi Lovato has been open about her struggles with mental health, and the 31-year-old singer spoke about her struggles with finding balance during a conversation with Dr. Charlie Shaffer at the NewYork-Presbyterian Center for Youth Mental Health’s annual charity event on Monday night. people.
“I went through inpatient treatment five times, and every time I went back to the treatment center I felt defeated,” Lovato said. “I know that experience firsthand, and I think the silver lining was when I started talking and building relationships with my treatment team, whether it was a job or a program.”
Lovato says she began to see “rays of hope” when she started to find joy in the little things in life, an experience that was previously foreign to her. “I was so used to not seeing hope… I felt like I’d hit rock bottom, but I knew what I had to do, which was to live in recovery, and that was something I’d been putting off for so long,” she added, referring to her fifth visit to inpatient psychiatric treatment.
Another key, she added, was finally finding the right combination of medication, which Lovato said “helped me so much… And then I think I hit rock bottom again. I thought, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ I felt defeated. But then all the important pieces started to fall into place like a perfect puzzle, and I started to see the light again.” The singer and actress also said that treatment taught her that her mental health is not her “identity.”
In 2011, when she was 18, Lovato revealed that she’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder during an interview with Robin Roberts. Dance with the devilShe revealed that she had been misdiagnosed.
“It wasn’t until I went through treatment for the first time that I realized that this isn’t who I am,” she said at the event on Monday. “It’s just part of what makes me who I am. I mean, my struggles have shaped me into the porcelain that you see today, but it’s never been my identity since. I guess you could say it’s just become something that makes me a little bit more interesting.” That said, despite the challenges, Lovato said she’s grateful for what she’s been through and what she’s overcome.
