The Mental Health Evolution

The Mental Health Evolution

The Mental Health Entrepreneur podcast is back—with a slightly new name and an expanded focus. We're excited to introduce The Mental Health Evolution, where we'll continue the journey of exploring what's changing in the mental health field, and we're so glad to have you with us as a listener. Explore the rapidly changing world of mental health with The Mental Health Evolution, hosted by Rachel Harrison. Each episode brings honest conversations with clinicians, tech founders, investors, insurance companies, and other key voices shaping the industry. We dive into what's working, what's not, and what's next—from innovative startups and ethical considerations in tech-driven therapy to policy changes, access to care, and the human connections that remain at the heart of mental health services. Whether you're a professional in the field, someone seeking care, or simply curious about the evolution of mental health, this podcast provides insights, perspectives, and practical information to help you navigate a complex and fast-moving landscape. Join us to stay informed, challenge assumptions, and be part of the conversation shaping the future of mental health.

Episodes

October 1, 2026 • 14 mins

This week Rachel goes solo to talk about something she has been watching unfold in real time — two states making completely opposite decisions about who gets reimbursed in behavioral health, at the exact same moment, with major implications for the mental health workforce pipeline.

Rachel owns a multi-state group practice and runs a training institute. She employs clinicians at every stage of licensu...

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Rachel speaks with Myriam Barthes, co-founder and CEO of Journey Clinical, the largest network of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy trained therapists in the United States. Journey Clinical operates as a collaborative care platform — connecting licensed psychotherapists with a dedicated medical team so that therapists can offer ketamine-assisted psychotherapy to their clients without having to navigate the medical ...

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This week we are revisiting a conversation Rachel recorded on the original Mental Health Entrepreneur podcast with Will Ratliff, co-founder of Transcend Health Solutions, one of the world's leading IV ketamine-assisted psychotherapy practices. If last week's conversation with Myriam Barthes focused on the business and access side of psychedelic-assisted therapy, this one goes deeper into the clinical and medical side &...

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September 9, 2026 • 24 mins

This week Rachel steps away from the interview format to do something she has been wanting to do for a while — take stock of everything the podcast has surfaced over the last year and pull it into a single, honest conversation about what is actually happening in mental health right now, and what clinicians and practice owners can do about it.

The landscape has shifted dramatically. Federal funding fo...

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Rachel speaks with Nicole Sartini, a licensed clinician, group practice owner, and founder of Build Better Health — a nonprofit think tank that is building the kind of collective provider power that this field has been missing.

Nicole came to advocacy the way most providers do: through her own practice. In 2024, after ten years of building Bridge Counseling and Wellness into a 60-provider group pract...

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Rachel speaks with Joanne Frederick, founder and CEO of Government Market Strategies, about something most clinicians never see but feel every single day — the procurement decisions, ownership structures, and administrative design choices that determine who gets credentialed, who gets paid, and who gets left out.

Joanne has spent more than 30 years on the inside of the largest government healthcare p...

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Rachel speaks with Marcus Schmit, Executive Director of NAMI Minnesota, about what is actually happening on the ground as federal Medicaid funding cuts ripple through the mental health system — and why, despite everything, pessimism is not a strategy.

NAMI Minnesota has been...

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This week's episode is something a little different. Recorded live at the 10-year anniversary celebration of Trauma Specialists of Maryland, this episode turns the tables on Rachel — instead of hosting, she is interviewed by two of her longtime friends and supporters from the Frederick community, Tom Lynch and Karlys Kline.
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Rachel speaks with Sara Bradley, Executive Director of York Day Early Learning in York, Pennsylvania, about a problem most people in the mental health field have never thought about — and that affects millions of the patients they see every day.

The American child care syste...

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Rachel speaks with Shana Palmieri, Chief Clinical Officer and co-founder of XFERALL (pronounced Transfer-all) , a real-time patient transfer and care coordination platform that is replacing one of the most broken processes in behavioral health — the psychiatric placement referral.
Shana spent years as the Direc...
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Rachel speaks with Stephanie Slowly Little, Executive Director of NAMI Maryland, about the state of mental health care access in Maryland, the funding landscape facing nonprofit behavioral health organizations, and what it actually takes to keep showing up for communities when every turn is making it harder.
NAMI Mar...
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Rachel speaks with Dr. Nick Jacobson, associate professor of biomedical data science, psychiatry, and computer science at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and director of the AIM HIGH Laboratory, about the first clinical trial of a fully generative AI therapy chatbot — and what the results actually show.

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Rachel speaks with Dr. Shairi Turner, Chief Health Officer at Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit that provides free, 24/7 text-based mental health support and crisis intervention through a community of trained volunteer counselors. In 2025, Crisis Text Line had more conversations than any year since its founding — over 1.5 million — and the data from those conversations ...
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Rachel speaks with Dr. Elizabeth Carr, a clinical psychologist and the founder and CEO of Kentlands Psychotherapy in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Elizabeth leads a team of 20 doctoral and master's-level clinicians and has spent over two decades building a community-focused, financially sustainable practice through some of the most disruptive periods in the history of me...

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Rachel speaks with Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, about the landmark KGM verdict — the first social media addiction case in the United States to reach a jury. In March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in the design of their platforms and awarded $6 million in damages to a young woman whose mental health ...
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In this solo episode, Rachel Harrison takes a break from her usual guest conversations to address something that has been generating a lot of discussion in the mental health community this week: the rebranding of CAQH as DataSpring.

If you have been in mental health practice for any amount of time,...

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Rachel Harrison speaks with Dr. Nick Shumate, a psychiatrist at the Division of Digital Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, whose background is as rare as it is relevant: before medicine, he was a regulatory attorney practicing before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. That combination of clinical training and legal expertise is...
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Rachel Harrison speaks with Cara Cheevers, Vice President of Coverage Policy at Inseparable, a national mental health advocacy organization working to win better mental health care for everyone in this country. Cara brings more than fifteen years of experience in health equity advocacy, including leading Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act enforcement at the Colorado ...
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In this episode, Rachel Harrison speaks with Maryland State Delegate Lily Qi, who represents District 15 in Montgomery County and has served in the Maryland General Assembly since 2019. Delegate Qi sits on the Economic Matters Committee, where her work focuses on consumer protection, business regulation, and positioning Maryland for the industries of the future. This conversati...
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Rachel speaks with Dr. Linda Michaels, PsyD, MBA, a psychologist in private practice in Chicago and co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN). Founded in 2017, PsiAN was built to provide a unified voice for psychotherapists across all disciplines and theoretical orientations, advocating for access to quality care and pushing back against ...

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