Laura Nolan joined the Peace Corps out of college because she'd found community health at the very end of school, fallen for it, and wanted to go somewhere far from where she grew up. She landed in the Fiji Islands, assigned to a women's group, and spent the first stretch of her service talking to them about health and how to cook healthy food. Nobody was interested. Nobody wanted to hang out with her.

So she stopped talking and started watching. What she saw was that health wasn't anywhere near the top of the list. These women didn't have resources and they didn't have agency, and everything else followed from that. She switched from being a health volunteer to a business volunteer and started helping them build businesses. A lot of beekeeping. Set up the hives, extract the honey, sell it to the resorts and the farmers market. Solve the root problem and a mother is more likely to have bus fare to get to the hospital when her kid has an infected cut.

That instinct traveled. A PhD in demography and social policy at Princeton, a master's at Harvard Chan, seven and a half years at Mathematica analyzing data from the Medicaid and CHIP programs, and now director at Manatt. If you've ever cited a national number about who is enrolled in Medicaid or what services they got, there's a decent chance she had a hand in helping to calculate it.

Patrick Gilligan sits with Laura on what the new federal legislation is doing to state Medicaid budgets, why every state's program is a snowflake, and the thing that keeps coming up in Somethings' own teen surveys: the single most cited barrier to a teenager getting mental health care is a parent. For a lot of those kids, the pain of asking for consent is worse than what they were already carrying, so they don't ask.

Then it turns personal. Laura has two kids under seven and writes a Substack called The Family Stack about technology and products for parents and families, and her answer to how it all holds together is uncomfortably simple. Name the one thing you will not trade. Hers is picking up her kids. She does that as often as she can, does the bedtime routine, and goes back to her computer almost every night.

Highlights:

- The Peace Corps in Fiji, and the moment she realized she should stop talking

- Beekeeping as public health, and what solving the root problem actually looks like

- A nighttime tour of Harvard Chan that turned into a career

- Two projects at once, adoring one and struggling through the other, and what that told her

- What the new federal legislation is doing to Medicaid financing and work requirements

- The silver lining for health plans: help people stay enrolled

- Why Medicaid is a snowflake in all fifty states, and why that's hard to build for

- Aligning an intervention with what payers actually pay for

- How peer support gets billed, and why teens asked for an older sibling instead of a clinician

- Parents as the number one cited barrier to teen mental health access

- The shape of ambition after having kids

- Be clear about your priorities and what works for yourself and your family

- What she's afraid of for her kids: uncertainty and speed, together

- Her mission, in seven words

Subscribe to Self Disclosed for more honest conversations about what it actually takes to fix mental health care. New episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:00 The Peace Corps, and landing in the Fiji Islands

02:46 When she stopped talking about health and started listening

11:46 Two projects at once, and what her own reaction told her

13:55 What the new federal legislation is doing to Medicaid

17:47 Why Medicaid is a snowflake in all fifty states

26:31 How peer support actually gets billed

30:40 Parents are the number one barrier to teen mental health care

37:22 Name the one thing you will not trade

48:16 Her mission: I want my kids to be proud of me

In this episode of Self Disclosed, we sit down with Dr. H. Jean Wright II, founder and CEO of Mental Health Success Boost and former Executive Deputy Commissioner of Mental Hygiene at NYC DOHMH, on why the question you ask about a person decides the answer you get.

We cover:

✅ Why “what happened to you” opens a conversation and “what’s wrong with you” shuts one down

✅ The interviews Jean refused to run until the guards took the leg irons and chains off

✅ How a Philadelphia division that started with two people, a peer specialist and an administrator, grew to 60

✅ Why men serving life sentences pooled eight-dollar-a-week wages to pay for other families’ dinners

✅ What New York gets right about behavioral health, and the zip codes still getting left out

Whether you run a system, fund one, or work inside one, this is a conversation about the difference between serving people and deciding for them.

🎧 Subscribe for more conversations like these

#BehavioralHealth #MentalHealth #ServantLeadership #TraumaInformedCare #PublicHealth

00:00 Intro

02:11 The rent you pay for being on this earth

03:38 Twelve years old, and choosing the kids nobody picked

05:26 What his parents showed him about servant leadership

06:27 “Your career chooses you”

09:24 Crime shows, and the mentor who pushed him toward forensics

13:16 What happened to you, not what’s wrong with you

15:32 Fundamental attribution error

16:29 No formula, no fear: building rapport behind the walls

18:52 Why he refused to interview anyone in leg irons

20:42 The Montgomery decision and the men coming home

22:07 Fathers and Children Together

25:27 Philadelphia: from one person at a time to a whole city

29:59 Two people to sixty, and a division still running today

33:48 Peer specialists, years ahead of reimbursement

35:46 Influencing people who don’t answer to you

38:50 New York, times ten

44:13 What NYC gets right, and what he’d fix tomorrow

51:06 Changing mindsets and giving hope

Dr. Ramon Lizardo got his MD at 24 and sold his first company at 27. He built and ran an emergency-dispatch startup that grew to over 7,500 medics and 150 health plans, transforming cities from Dallas to San Francisco into places where a 911 call could get you a doctor in 37 seconds. But for years, he didn't believe mental health was real. There's no blood test for it, he told himself. Then he walked out of his office into Times Square, stood under an ad with his own face on it, and realized he felt sadder and more tired than he'd ever admit. His response was to build another company instead of getting help.

In this episode of Self Disclosed, Ramon sits down with Patrick Gilligan to talk about what changed his mind, and why he just stepped away from a string of successful exits to become Chief Health Officer at Somethings. Along the way, he opens up about "the dungeon," the dimly lit psychiatric holding room he worked next to for years, what happens to a family the moment a child gets involuntarily committed, and why he thinks peer support, not more waitlists, is the fastest way to actually reach kids in crisis.

Highlights:

• How a doctor who once dismissed mental health entirely ended up leading a mental health company

• Inside "the dungeon": what really happens when a teenager in crisis walks into an ER

• Why parents lose the right to take their own child out of a facility once they're committed

• The Chipotle-inspired operations formula Ramon used to reshape hospital care

• Why he believes health plans "are not demons," and what that means for fixing the system

• What made an exited founder walk back into the fire for one line in a pitch doc: "it doesn't say by when"

• The philosophy behind Project Porsche, and why Ramon says he's just "a collection of stories"

Subscribe to Self Disclosed for more honest conversations about what it actually takes to fix mental health care. New episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:18 MD at 24

03:10 The medical school application he almost didn't send

05:51 "You don't deserve to be a doctor"

07:56 The app he built out of a bad ER experience

10:13 The Chipotle timing cue formula

12:11 Ego, stigma, and the loneliness of leaving medicine

13:59 Tele911: 10 million patients, 150 health plans

16:35 What he understands about American health care that others don't

19:05 Why health plans are not demons

20:18 The three things he decided to honor

22:40 Why he didn't believe mental health was real

23:54 Standing in Times Square under his own face

26:21 Inside "the dungeon"

30:53 What happens to a family when a child gets committed

32:54 What gives him hope: peer support

36:48 A doctor in 37 seconds

39:55 Why he joined Somethings

41:29 Project Porsche

44:01 Why he collects stories, not things

Dr. Amber Childs has spent nearly 15 years working on one question: how do we actually get young people the mental health care they need? Early in her training she was writing discharge plans for teenagers, telling families the soonest available clinician was 12 weeks out, and bridging the gap with emergency services. The math never worked, and it still doesn't.

Amber is a licensed clinical psychologist, associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, and now Chief Clinical Officer at Somethings. She sits in a rare seat, holding academic rigor and real-world deployment at the same time. In this conversation with Patrick Gilligan, she makes the case that the answer isn't waiting on a technological breakthrough. It's the oldest thing we have: relationships, connection, and being witnessed by someone who has been where you are.

She and Patrick get into what the research says about therapeutic alliance, why an adult intervention can't just be pointed at a 16-year-old, and the moment in a group therapy room that changed how she thinks about who is qualified to help.

In this episode:

• Why Amber didn't know psychology existed until college, and the whiteboard quote that changed her direction

• What the research says about therapeutic alliance, and why that finding widens who can deliver care

• The teenager whose one sentence reframed her entire approach to scale

• Why pace and prioritization are bigger problems than clinician shortage

• What she learned watching a teen accept from a peer what she couldn't deliver herself

• How to build technology that props up human connection instead of replacing it

• The one thing she'd change with a magic wand

Subscribe for new conversations on youth mental health, care delivery, and what actually works.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Learn more about Somethings at somethings.com

What really moves the needle for transition-age youth (16–24)? It’s not another program list—it’s engagement. In this episode, Patrick sits down with Marc Fagan, President of YouthCare Illinois, to unpack a new playbook: put youth voice on the mic, design for discovery (not lectures), make peer support core infrastructure, and measure uptake instead of offerings.

Who this is for: Medicaid leaders, child-welfare teams, providers, school partners, policymakers, and anyone building youth programs that need to work in the real world.

You’ll learn:

• Why “listening” (for real) is the biggest shift since 2015

• How to win the first yes from the least-likely-to-engage population

• Where peer support and community fit alongside therapy

• How to design discovery-oriented care—healthy risk with real safety nets

• The role of virtual touchpoints, SDOH (jobs/school), and what to measure next

Chapters

00:00 Cold open — quick banter & setup

00:27 Who is Marc Fagan & what YouthCare does

01:08 Why Marc chose clinical psychology

01:57 Therapeutic schools: the power of relational work

03:10 From 1:1 therapy to systems design

04:13 Story: a student turns classroom chaos into graduation

06:26 Scaling impact beyond one campus

09:06 Thresholds highlights: youth homelessness program

10:27 Launching First Episode Psychosis care in Illinois

12:14 Why early intervention changes the arc

13:24 Then vs now: outcomes and accountability

14:39 What “transition-age youth” actually need (and don’t get)

16:06 2025’s biggest shift: youth voice leads

17:47 What teens keep telling us (and how adults should respond)

18:15 Discovery-oriented care: learning by doing, with guardrails

20:20 Design for exploration, not lectures

21:21 YouthCare’s population: youth with child-welfare histories

22:51 Virtual touchpoints & continuity across placements

24:00 Beyond therapy: groups, play/animal therapy, peer support

25:07 The pivot: from mostly clinical to mostly social

26:10 Multidisciplinary models that actually stick

27:02 The engagement problem—and how to solve it

28:04 Training staff to earn the first yes

29:10 Measuring what matters: uptake, not inventory

29:37 SDOH in practice: jobs, school, first opportunities

31:25 Early jobs and lessons (including a data-entry horror story)

33:01 Leadership: excitement, ownership, youth focus groups

34:40 Preventing burnout: celebrate small wins

38:05 The next 10–15 years: risk, policy, connection

40:07 Hopes for the future: faster access, shorter time in care

42:02 Biggest levers: tech plumbing + nontraditional care

44:11 Why relationships still beat everything

44:52 Showing up authentically (yes, there was a dance-off)

46:13 What keeps Marc optimistic

48:25 Where to learn more about YouthCare

49:14 One snap: immediate access + one committed adult

50:01 Closing

If this was useful, please like, subscribe, and share with someone building for youth.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 (U.S.).

What makes a teen mental health product worth opening every day? In this episode of Self Disclosed, Somethings’ design team walks through the choices behind our new brand and product: why we center connection before anything else, how we keep teens in the driver’s seat, and why our visual system embraces graffiti over clinical calm. We also share how we use AI as a quiet assist for mentors rather than a chatbot on the front line, and the naming story behind Somethings.

You will learn

• The core problem we see behind the stats: loneliness

• How to design for trust, agency, and real conversation

• Why a teen-facing brand should feel expressive, not pastel and clinical

• Where AI helps humans show up better, and where it does not

• The origin of our name and why words matter to teens

Chapters

00:00 Cold open and why design matters in youth mental health

01:58 Meet the team and backgrounds

03:56 First designer’s path from pro sports to product

05:46 Our design philosophy: build with teens, not for them

07:06 What we hear every day: loneliness is the through-line

08:32 Teens can say more than adults think, if you listen

10:37 How adult minimization harms trust

11:54 Designing for genuine connection and rapport

15:50 Our AI stance: support mentors, do not replace them

19:43 Features that help mentors remember, follow up, and be present

20:50 A different approach to product and brand in mental health

21:27 What most teen mental health brands miss

23:37 Can mental health feel “cool” and authentic

25:16 Launching the new brand

27:44 Why graffiti, not fog and pastels

29:21 Empowering teen self-expression on purpose

31:32 Keeping the brand a mirror to teen life

33:23 Bringing brand principles into product decisions

35:59 What excites us about the next chapter

38:33 Why we are called Somethings

45:27 Final thoughts and how to get involved

If this was useful, like and subscribe, and share it with someone building for teens.

In this episode of Self Disclosed, we open up Somethings’ first clinical outcomes report from our statewide rollout in North Carolina and talk plainly about what changed for teens, how we measured it, and what it means for families, schools, payers, and states.

What this episode covers

- What Somethings is: a youth mental health app that pairs teens (13–26) with certified peer mentors for on-demand support and continuity of relationship- Why North Carolina partnered to offer the program free to ~1.2M teens across all 100 counties- How we evaluated impact (pre–post design; PHQ-8, GAD-7, WHO-5, ASQ-3)- Engagement at scale, rural access, and why human connection beats chatbots for this age group- What the data says about depression, anxiety, well-being, and suicidal ideation- Where this fits in the care ecosystem (ED diversion, continuity, cost, and appropriate utilization)

Key findings (real-world, not a lab)- Average time from sign-up to first connection: ~6 hours- In about 2 months: 77% of teens improved in at least one domain; 52% showed clinically meaningful improvement; nearly 1 in 4 reached remission in at least one area- Teens who started with suicidal thoughts: prevalence dropped from ~40% at intake to ~27% at follow-up; median time to resolution = 16 days- Who we served: a high-need, diverse population with common moderate-to-severe symptoms, including many youth who struggle to access traditional care

Who should watch

Parents and educators, Medicaid and health-plan leaders, state and county health officials, school mental-health teams, clinicians, and builders who need evidence on what actually engages teens and moves outcomes.

Chapters

00:00 Intro and why we recorded this

00:50 Meet the team

05:06 What Somethings does and why peers matter

06:50 North Carolina partnership overview

08:19 Study design and measures (PHQ-8, GAD-7, WHO-5, ASQ-3)

11:01 Who we served and why access matters

12:16 Engagement metrics and 6-hour time to first connection

13:11 Baseline risk: depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation

15:32 Outcomes at ~2 months: improvement, clinical change, remission

16:45 Why rapport is the intervention

19:51 Depression results, then anxiety and well-being

22:58 Suicidal ideation: resolution timeline and impact

26:38 “Teens are not little adults” and system navigation

29:42 Why many teens drop out of treatment and how peers help

33:31 ER boarding, cost, and appropriate utilization

36:34 Rural access and continuity in the real world

38:19 Case study from the field

41:13 Making support more accessible for different learners

41:58 What health plans and states can do right now

42:55 Rapid-fire: one change we’d make for youth mental health

45:59 Closing thoughts

This is a real-world, pre–post outcomes evaluation, not medical advice. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 in the U.S.

What if the system built to protect children is also the one traumatizing them?

Nicole Six — VP of Product Development at Sentara Health and a licensed clinical social worker — has spent her career inside the child welfare and behavioral health systems. From her early days as a social worker in New York City to leading large-scale Medicaid and child welfare initiatives in North Carolina, Nicole has seen how policy, poverty, and broken systems collide to shape the lives of vulnerable kids.

In this powerful conversation, she and Patrick Gilligan dive into what’s working, what’s failing, and what needs to change — now.

You’ll hear:

- Why children in foster care lose connection to their families and communities the longer they’re in care

- The painful truth that “we created the trauma” for many of the kids our systems claim to protect

- Why the best clinicians are leaving behavioral health — and how that’s quietly deepening the access crisis

- The case for upstream prevention and family-centered care

- What a transformed child welfare system could look like by 2030

- And the one thing Nicole says every child needs most: someone who loves them.

This episode is raw, eye-opening, and deeply human.

If you care about child welfare, mental health, or Medicaid reform — you need to hear this one.

Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction

02:00 – Nicole’s path from social work to leadership

07:00 – Lessons from child welfare in NYC vs. North Carolina

13:00 – Why prevention is everything — and why it’s underfunded

17:00 – The myth of “bad families” and what kids really need

24:00 – The mental health access crisis and why clinicians are leaving

30:00 – How to design systems that actually help families

36:00 – What a trauma-informed future could look like

40:00 – Why kids in care lose their connection to “their people”

43:00 – The hard truth: we created the trauma we’re trying to fix

48:00 – The one thing Nicole wishes every child could have

Too many kids in crisis end up stuck in emergency rooms. Not because they need to be there, but because the system doesn’t know what else to do.

Christine Beck, Executive Director of Behavioral Health at Optum UHC (NC Medicaid), has spent her career changing that reality. From her early days listening to foster youth no one else would hear, to launching pilots that reshaped North Carolina’s crisis response, to leading statewide Medicaid behavioral health today, Christine brings both the heart of a clinician and the vision of a systems builder.

In this conversation, we dive into the programs that worked, the lessons from pilots that scaled statewide, and what it will take to build trauma-informed systems that actually keep kids safe, supported, and at home.

Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction

02:00 – Christine’s first internship: seeing foster youth overlooked

04:00 – The moment she realized kids just needed someone to listen

06:00 – Why foster parents need wraparound support to succeed

09:30 – Piloting crisis diversion: keeping kids out of the ER

11:30 – How NC’s “MORC” model grew from those pilots

13:30 – Building provider and hospital alignment around crisis response

15:00 – The evolution of NC Medicaid: waivers, tailored plans, specialty plans

18:00 – Standard plans vs. tailored plans: prevention vs. specialty care

21:00 – Investing in school-based health and prevention

22:30 – Tackling stigma in mental health

24:00 – Training first responders to respond differently

30:00 – Scaling programs statewide: why change moves too slow

32:00 – The workforce shortage: using peers and community health workers

35:00 – Making data useful (without drowning in it)

38:30 – Programs that exceeded expectations: families staying together

40:30 – What trauma-informed systems look like

43:00 – The next big domino in crisis response

45:00 – Being the clinical voice inside a large insurer

48:00 – The career pivot that changed everything

49:30 – If Christine could snap her fingers and fix one thing in youth mental health…

In this episode, Patrick Gilligan sits down with Dr. Mary Wilson, CEO of the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority for a powerful conversation on systems change, leadership, and upstream impact.They dive into:✅ How her experience as a pediatrician shaped her approach to policy✅ What she learned leading access reform at Kaiser Permanente✅ The unique mental health challenges Alaska faces and how Crisis Now is addressing them✅ Why prevention (especially ages 0–5) is the single most important lever for long-term outcomes✅ The strategic vision behind Alaska’s statewide mental health transformationMary shares tactical advice for healthcare professionals, state leaders, and change agents everywhere and breaks down how to drive meaningful progress in even the most complex systems.Whether you’re building a new mental health strategy or just want to understand what it takes to lead across clinical, executive, and policy roles, this episode is packed with clarity, wisdom, and optimism.🎧 Subscribe for more conversations like these#MentalHealthPolicy #HealthcareLeadership #PediatricsToPolicy #BehavioralHealthInnovation #AlaskaMentalHealth