Knowledge at your tips
Frank, a 78-year-old retired teacher in Sarasota, bought a long-term care insurance policy from Genworth in 2003 when he was 57. He had watched his mother’s Alzheimer’s progress through eight years and a $340,000 nursing home bill. The policy promised $200 daily benefit, 5% compound inflation rider, lifetime benefit period, 90-day elimination. Premiums were $2,800 … Read more
Why Cultural Fit With Your Therapist Is Not Optional For decades, the dominant assumption in American mental health care was that any properly trained therapist could effectively treat any patient, regardless of identity, background, or worldview. Clinical research and patient outcomes have steadily dismantled that assumption. Cultural competence, the capacity of a clinician to understand and work … Read more
Marisol Vega had tried seven antidepressants by the time she walked into a Phoenix psychiatric office on a 112-degree afternoon in July. SSRIs flattened her into a fog. SNRIs gave her tremors. Two trials of bupropion did nothing. The 41-year-old marketing director had been depressed since her second child was born in 2019, and the … Read more
Devon was 22, a junior at Arizona State, the kind of student who built mechanical keyboards and ran a Discord server for indie game devs. He had used cannabis since high school. The change began the week he switched from flower to a 92 percent THC concentrate his roommate brought back from a Phoenix dispensary. … Read more
Margaret was 71, a retired librarian in Tucson, Arizona, who had been on lithium for forty-three years for bipolar I disorder. Her psychiatrist had retired the previous winter, and her primary care physician inherited the prescription without much review. In late August, during a heatwave, her cardiologist added lisinopril for blood pressure and a low-dose … Read more
Marisol was nineteen, a sophomore at the University of Denver, when her residence director found her unconscious on the bathroom floor. Her roommate had called twice that week, worried. Marisol had stopped going to the dining hall in November. By February, she weighed 78 pounds. The paramedics noted a heart rate of 32 beats per … Read more
The Question You Have Been Afraid to Ask You drink to calm your anxiety. Three beers and the racing thoughts slow down. A glass of wine and the tightness in your chest loosens. The alcohol works. That is the problem. It works so well that you have started to depend on it. Now you wake … Read more
Caleb sat on the edge of the bed in a treatment centre in Phoenix, Arizona, on the morning of his second day off oxycodone, sweating through a t-shirt he had already changed twice. He was thirty-four. He had been taking forty milligrams of oxycodone three times a day for the better part of seven years, … Read more
Rachel, a 38-year-old graphic designer in Portland, Oregon, came home from the emergency veterinary clinic on a Wednesday night without her cat. Mochi had been with her for fourteen years, longer than any romantic relationship, longer than any apartment, longer than any job. Rachel cried so hard in the parking lot that the vet tech … Read more
Hannah Quigley washed her hands until they bled. The 27-year-old graphic designer from Saint Paul had developed contamination OCD after a hospital stay in 2022, and by spring 2025 she was spending 11 hours a day on rituals: showering 90 minutes, scrubbing doorknobs with bleach. Her outpatient ERP therapist tried for nine months. Her psychiatrist … Read more