Marcus, a 58-year-old retired postal worker in Louisville, signed up for a Humana Medicare Advantage plan during his initial enrollment period because his wife had used Humana for years. Two months in, his sleep collapsed. He started waking at 3 a.m. with chest tightness, replaying memories of a coworker’s overdose death from 2019. His primary … Read more
Hannah delivered her first child on a quiet Tuesday morning in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and by the following Sunday she was no longer sleeping. By the second week she was hearing her grandmother’s voice telling her the baby would be safer with someone else. Her husband, who had been reading every postpartum article he … Read more
Diane, a 41-year-old marketing director in Minneapolis, sat in her therapist’s office holding a printout she had bookmarked at 2 a.m. the night before. Twelve years married. Two kids. A career people described as enviable. Yet she had spent the entire previous weekend rehearsing imaginary failure conversations with her boss, her husband, her sister, and … Read more
Adolescent Mental Health Care Is Its Own System The continuum of mental health care for adolescents looks superficially similar to the adult continuum, with outpatient therapy, intensive outpatient, partial hospitalisation, residential, and inpatient levels. The actual experience inside each level is dramatically different. Adolescent programs incorporate school components, family work, developmental considerations, and identity-formation issues that adult … Read more
Adolescent Mental Health Care Is Its Own System The continuum of mental health care for adolescents looks superficially similar to the adult continuum, with outpatient therapy, intensive outpatient, partial hospitalisation, residential, and inpatient levels. The actual experience inside each level is dramatically different. Adolescent programs incorporate school components, family work, developmental considerations, and identity-formation issues that adult … Read more
Trevor was 28, a software engineer in Austin, when his fiancee called his sister at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday. He had not slept since Saturday. He had drained 11,000 dollars from their joint account to invest in a cryptocurrency project he had only heard about that morning. He was talking faster than she could … Read more
Priya, a 34-year-old software engineer in Oakland, called Kaiser Permanente’s appointment line in March after her postpartum anxiety became unmanageable. The intake clinician booked her for a 50-minute initial assessment four days later, which felt encouraging. Then came the catch: her follow-up therapy session was scheduled seven weeks out. Priya knew she could not white-knuckle … Read more
The Insurance Decision Many Self-Employed Americans Make Wrong For the millions of Americans who do not get health insurance through an employer, the ACA marketplace is the primary path to coverage that includes mental health care. Self-employed workers, gig economy participants, early retirees, recent graduates, and people between jobs all rely on the marketplace, often without … Read more
The Insurance Decision Many Self-Employed Americans Make Wrong For the millions of Americans who do not get health insurance through an employer, the ACA marketplace is the primary path to coverage that includes mental health care. Self-employed workers, gig economy participants, early retirees, recent graduates, and people between jobs all rely on the marketplace, often without … Read more
Linda was 64, a retired schoolteacher in Sarasota, when her cardiologist scheduled her for a triple coronary bypass. The surgery went textbook. The recovery did not. Two weeks after discharge, Linda’s daughter Janelle noticed her mother had stopped reading, stopped calling friends, and was sleeping 14 hours a day. By week four, Linda was crying … Read more