Demi Lovato Launches Record Label and Mental Health Awareness Campaign in the Same Week, Drops Mic

Demi Lovato signs papers to start her own record label, Safehouse Records (Instagram)
Demi Lovato signs papers to start her own record label, Safehouse Records (Instagram)

It can be difficult to get back into a rhythm at work after a three-day weekend, but not for Demi Lovato. She's now well on her way to becoming a mogul in her own right, launching her very own record label and a new mental health awareness campaign within the same four-day week.

Tuesday, Lovato announced on Instagram that she had partnered with Nick Jonas and their shared manager, Phil McIntyre, to start their own record label, Safehouse Records, as an imprint of Island Records.

While signing papers to officially launch Safehouse Records, Lovato shared a heartfelt message for McIntyre, whom she says "saved my life."

McIntyre has managed Lovato, 22, since she was just 15 years old. In 2010, when she was just 18 years old, Lovato's substance abuse issues and eating disorder came to a head and she had to do something. Lovato says it was McIntyre's guidance that got her through it all.

"When so many others had given up on me, he never did," Lovato wrote on Instagram. "He told me he cared too much about me to watch me self-destruct.. Therefore at the very end of my drinking and using he gave me one last chance.. Get sober and he'll stay, or he'd have to leave."

Lovato checked into rehab and celebrated three years of sobriety in March.

Demi Lovato and Phil McIntyre (Instagram)
Demi Lovato and Phil McIntyre (Instagram)

"[McIntyre] stood his ground and said, 'If you do this I will fight this battle with you every step of the way.' I knew I couldn't let go of him not only as a manager but as an extremely important person in my life who genuinely cares about me," Lovato wrote. "He is one of the very few people who LITERALLY saved. my. life. I don't think I'd be alive without him for many different reasons."

Lovato has been very open about her struggles with addicition and mental illness in the years since. Thursday, she announced the beginning of a brand new mental health awareness campaign called Be Vocal: Speak Up for Mental Health.

Lovato says it's "very important to me because I have struggled with bipolar disorder for several years now. Also my father had schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as well, and I watched him live a very unfortunate life because of the lack of access to treatment. So it's very personal to me. I just think mental illness is something people need to learn more about and the stigma needs to be taken away from."

The goal of Be Vocal is to remove the stigma attached to mental illness and get people speaking about it openly.

"There's so many different ways you can help," Lovato says. "I think together as a country we have to step up and we have to do something about this issue that is becoming quite an epidemic."

As for herself, Lovato says she's "living well with [her] mental illness" and "couldn't be happier today." And why wouldn't she be? She's totally winning this week.