JO.ROBERTS / BACKGRID

It's a mission she had been spearheading almost singlehandedly for seven-plus years. After she came clean with that initial confession—the reason she was abruptly pulled from her tour with the Jonas Brothers to seek medical treatment in 2010 was because she had been grappling with substance abuse, addiction, an eating disorder, depression and self-inflicted harming for years—no detail was too embarrassing, too heartbreaking to share.

Whether it was her inability to "go an hour without using cocaine," or the fact that she ignored pleas from her own family, telling them "try to ground me—I pay your bills," or that even after her 2011 release from rehab she continued drinking, filling Sprite bottles with vodka "just to get on a plane to go back to LA to the sober living house that I was staying at," if it could help just one person, she would happily relay it to Refinery29, to Access Hollywood, to Seventeen.

Her loftiest audience: Capitol Hill, where she traveled to advocate for mental health reform in 2014, speaking out about her own diagnosis with bipolar disorder. "We have the power to make a difference and we have the personal experience needed to be taken seriously," she said during a speech on the National Alliance on Mental Illness' Day of Action. "We know what it means to have our lives or the lives of people we love get off track because of mental illness. We understand that mental illness can be serious and absolutely devastating. We also know mental illness can be treatable when we have access to appropriate, comprehensive care."