Finding Mental Health Care

When 19-year-old Marcus Bell first walked into a therapy office in Austin, Texas, he had already been turned away by two providers. The first told him he needed to “wait until he was older to be sure.” The second insisted on a 12-month exploratory phase before discussing a referral letter for hormone therapy, even though … Read more

When Mei-Lin Chen, a 34-year-old software engineer in Sunnyvale, California, finally decided to seek therapy after months of insomnia and silent crying spells in her car, she expected the hardest part to be admitting she needed help. It turned out the harder part was finding someone who could understand her. The first English-speaking therapist asked … 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

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

Yusuf, a 28-year-old graduate student in Houston, had grown up in a tight-knit Pakistani Muslim family and was struggling with depression after his father’s sudden death. He tried a campus counselor first, but each session ended with a quiet frustration he could not name. The counselor was kind and competent, but she had asked him … Read more

Hannah, a 19-year-old college sophomore in Minneapolis, had been losing weight for nine months when her mother finally drove from Duluth to take her to an outpatient assessment. The first therapist Hannah saw — a kind generalist who advertised eating disorder treatment on her website — used cognitive techniques and weekly weigh-ins but did not … Read more

Marcus, a 34-year-old engineer from Pittsburgh, had spent two years in weekly talk therapy describing his panic attacks before he asked his therapist a simple question: “Are we ever going to actually do anything about the avoidance?” His therapist, kind but trained mostly in supportive psychotherapy, admitted CBT was not her specialty. Marcus searched the … Read more

Cassidy Worthington-Lee, a 32-year-old librarian in Burlington, had been told for most of her adult life that she was “too sensitive.” She cried during certain music in coffee shops, came home exhausted from social gatherings that her friends found energizing, noticed details about lighting and noise levels that nobody else in the room registered, and … Read more

Roland and Adelaide Quintero, a Phoenix couple in their late forties, had spent eight months in what they called couples counseling without making progress on the recurring conflicts that had brought them in. The counselor was warm, asked good questions, and gave each of them equal airtime, but the sessions kept circling the same arguments … Read more

Devon Pritchett, a 41-year-old IT director in Raleigh, paid a coach $2,800 over four months to help him handle what he described as workplace burnout and intermittent panic at his desk. The sessions felt productive at first, full of breathing exercises and weekly accountability check-ins around exercise and sleep. By the third month his panic … Read more