January 11, 2026

The Mental Health Crisis in Pediatric Care & Why Veterans Drop Out of PTSD Treatment

Episode Segments:

TPediatric Mental Health: A Financial Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight Behavioral health care now consumes 40% of all pediatric medical spending—nearly double the 22% recorded in 2011. Kenneth Michelson, MD, MPH, emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, explains that without regulatory reforms and better reimbursement rates, untreated children will continue flooding emergency departments in crisis.
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Why Veterans Drop Out of PTSD Treatment (And How to Fix It) Here's something that might surprise you: when PTSD treatment is delivered weekly, dropout rates soar, but package those same therapies into intensive formats and retention improves dramatically. Elizabeth Penix-Smith, PhD, Licensed Clinical Psychologist at Idaho State University, National Research Council fellow at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, explains the ABCs of PTSD.
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20 Years of Evidence: How Reducing Arsenic in Drinking Water Saves Lives A twenty-year study has revealed something remarkable about arsenic exposure. Alexander F. Van Geen, PhD, Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Columbia Climate School, found that when people switched from arsenic-contaminated wells to safer water sources, their death risk falls--even after years of chronic exposure.
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