Robert, a 61-year-old retired electrician in Cleveland, walked into the emergency department with crushing chest pain, a troponin level off the chart, and a clear command from his cardiologist that he needed immediate cardiac catheterization to prevent a fatal infarction. He refused. Not in a confused, mumbling way, but firmly, with eye contact, telling the … Read more
Robert, a 61-year-old retired electrician in Cleveland, walked into the emergency department with crushing chest pain, a troponin level off the chart, and a clear command from his cardiologist that he needed immediate cardiac catheterization to prevent a fatal infarction. He refused. Not in a confused, mumbling way, but firmly, with eye contact, telling the … Read more
Robert, a 58-year-old accountant in Cleveland, was six weeks past his triple bypass surgery and could not understand why he felt worse than before the operation. The surgery had gone well by every cardiac measure. His ejection fraction had improved. But he was waking at three each morning with chest tightness that the cardiology workup … Read more
Robert, a 58-year-old accountant in Cleveland, was six weeks past his triple bypass surgery and could not understand why he felt worse than before the operation. The surgery had gone well by every cardiac measure. His ejection fraction had improved. But he was waking at three each morning with chest tightness that the cardiology workup … Read more
Marcus walked out of the Cook County Jail in Chicago on a Tuesday morning in February, carrying a paper bag with three days of antipsychotic medication and a bus pass that expired by Friday. He had been incarcerated for fourteen months. During that stretch, a jail psychiatrist had stabilized him on a long-acting injectable for … Read more
Marcus walked out of the Cook County Jail in Chicago on a Tuesday morning in February, carrying a paper bag with three days of antipsychotic medication and a bus pass that expired by Friday. He had been incarcerated for fourteen months. During that stretch, a jail psychiatrist had stabilized him on a long-acting injectable for … Read more
Annika Lindholm grew up taking weekly sauna sessions with her grandmother in a small lakeside cabin outside Duluth, Minnesota, where the family had kept Finnish customs alive through three generations. She did not think of it as therapy. It was simply Saturday: load the wood stove, sweat for twenty minutes, walk the gravel path down … Read more
Annika Lindholm grew up taking weekly sauna sessions with her grandmother in a small lakeside cabin outside Duluth, Minnesota, where the family had kept Finnish customs alive through three generations. She did not think of it as therapy. It was simply Saturday: load the wood stove, sweat for twenty minutes, walk the gravel path down … Read more
Hannah, a thirty-one-year-old paralegal in Boston, kept a small spiral notebook on her nightstand. For nine months she had been tracking the days. The pattern was unmistakable. Eight to ten days before each period, the world would tilt: a kind of hopelessness that arrived without warning, intrusive thoughts about not waking up, sudden rage at … Read more
Elena, a 41-year-old literature professor in Chicago, had cycled through three rounds of brief CBT for what her doctors called recurrent major depression. Each round produced a few months of relief and then the same heavy weight returned. After her third relapse her psychiatrist suggested something different. He referred her to a candidate at the … Read more