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Ep 52: Follow the Money, Follow the Power with Joanne Frederick

The Mental Health Evolution

Release Date: 08/27/2026

Ep 60: Kids Absorb Everything: Immigration Fear in the Therapy Room, with Val Strunk show art Ep 60: Kids Absorb Everything: Immigration Fear in the Therapy Room, with Val Strunk

The Mental Health Evolution

Rachel talks with Val Strunk, a licensed social worker, child therapist, and co-owner of Wired to Bloom Therapy in the Cincinnati area. Val is an immigrant and an EMDR-trained therapist. She uses child-centered, trauma-informed play and creative approaches with children and families, including immigrant families. Rachel found her work in Cincinnati Magazine. They discuss how immigration enforcement and changes to health coverage are adding stress for immigrant and mixed-status families. Georgetown's Center for Children and Families has called this a "perfect storm" for children's mental...

info_outline Ep 59: High-Potency Cannabis and the Developing Brain with Libby Stuyt show art Ep 59: High-Potency Cannabis and the Developing Brain with Libby Stuyt

The Mental Health Evolution

Rachel welcomes back Dr. Libby Stuyt, a guest many listeners may remember from our previous podcast, The Mental Health Entrepreneur. Dr. Stuyt is a board-certified psychiatrist and volunteer clinical faculty at the University of Colorado Health Science Center. She is also a trainer for the People's Organization for Community Acupuncture. When she joined us before, the conversation was about the use of acupuncture in addiction treatment. That episode is linked below. Dr. Stuyt has spent over three decades working in Colorado with people who have co-occurring mental illness and substance use...

info_outline Ep 58: Two States, Two Directions: What's Happening to the Future of Our Workforce show art Ep 58: Two States, Two Directions: What's Happening to the Future of Our Workforce

The Mental Health Evolution

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 licensure — interns, provisionally licensed, and fully licensed — and she has skin in this game. What she is watching happen right now affects every practice that trains the next generation of...

info_outline Ep 56: Making Psychedelic Therapy Accessible with Myriam Barthes show art Ep 56: Making Psychedelic Therapy Accessible with Myriam Barthes

The Mental Health Evolution

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 side alone. Myriam came to this work through her own personal experience with ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, which she describes as transformative. Before co-founding Journey...

info_outline Ep 57: IV Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy with Will Ratliff show art Ep 57: IV Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy with Will Ratliff

The Mental Health Evolution

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 — what the treatment actually looks like, how it works, and why Will built his practice the way he did. Will's path to ketamine therapy is unlike most. He started as an EMT at...

info_outline Ep 55: Be the One Who Does It show art Ep 55: Be the One Who Does It

The Mental Health Evolution

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 for mental health programs is being cut. SAMHSA has faced consolidation proposals. The 988 crisis line has seen reduced funding. School mental health grants have been halted. Insurance companies...

info_outline Ep 54: Building Collective Power with Nicole Sartini show art Ep 54: Building Collective Power with Nicole Sartini

The Mental Health Evolution

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 practice in Louisville, Kentucky, she watched insurance carve-outs and contract repairing cut her practice's income by 30 percent for the same number of sessions. She started organizing locally —...

info_outline Ep 52: Follow the Money, Follow the Power with Joanne Frederick show art Ep 52: Follow the Money, Follow the Power with Joanne Frederick

The Mental Health Evolution

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 programs in the country — Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, and Veterans Health — helping clients win contracts in excess of 25 billion dollars and watching the same patterns play out across every...

info_outline Ep 52: Pessimism Is Not a Strategy with Marcus Schmit show art Ep 52: Pessimism Is Not a Strategy with Marcus Schmit

The Mental Health Evolution

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 a statewide leader in mental health advocacy, education, and peer support for decades. Marcus stepped into the Executive Director role as his state was navigating an extraordinary convergence of collective trauma — the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, a school shooting, the assassination of a state legislator, and...

info_outline Ep 51: 10 Years of Trauma Specialists - a Live Episode show art Ep 51: 10 Years of Trauma Specialists - a Live Episode

The Mental Health Evolution

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.   Tom Lynch spent more than 45 years practicing law in Maryland, most recently with Miles and Stockbridge in Frederick, and has served as chair of the Community Foundation, Frederick Community College, and the Frederick Chamber of Commerce. By his own account, his...

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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 programs in the country — Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, and Veterans Health — helping clients win contracts in excess of 25 billion dollars and watching the same patterns play out across every system she has worked in. Her perspective on the CAQH rebrand to DataSpring is not that of a worried clinician. It is that of someone who has seen this move before and knows exactly what it means when the entity governing a shared infrastructure becomes owned by the people who benefit most from controlling it.

The conversation covers the structural conflict of interest created by insurer ownership of the credentialing backbone, why credentialing delays are a revenue problem and a patient access problem as much as an administrative one, and what it would actually take to fix a system that Joanne argues was never designed to serve everyone equitably. She walks Rachel through the TRICARE reforms happening in 2026 and what they reveal about how large government healthcare programs modernize — and don't. And she ends with a call to action that is both practical and urgent: find the people with the courage to say this doesn't make sense anymore, and support them, because they are going to need all the help they can get.

This episode also includes a brief ad read for the Foundations of Trauma Therapy course at the Trauma Specialist Training Institute — an eight-week live remote training starting October 20th. Early bird pricing is available through October 6th. Group rates for teams of five or more are available by emailing [email protected] and mentioning the podcast.

Featured Training
Foundations of Trauma Therapy — Trauma Specialist Training Institute
https://www.traumaspecialiststraining.com/trainings/foundations-trauma-therapy

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Music by Zach Harrison