Today, we're diving into a powerful and painful truth. When leaders attack mental health and healthcare, women pay the price. Now, if you're surprised to hear a therapist talk about politics, I get it. Mental health professionals are often portrayed as neutral or apolitical, at her time therapy, we practice from a feminist counseling lens. That means that we understand that the personal is political and mental health doesn't always exist in a vacuum. The systems, structures and policies we live under deeply affect our wellbeing. Feminist therapists don't just help clients survive these systems. We help them challenge them. We support our clients in finding their voices, reclaiming their power, and practicing activism in a way that is sustainable and authentic to them. And we do our best to model that ourselves by speaking up and living our values, including through this podcast. This episode is a call to awareness, a call to action, and above all, a call to compassion. For yourself and for the millions of women navigating mental health struggles as they watch their access to healthcare unravel. We live in a time where political rhetoric is not just talk. It translates to policies that shape our bodies, our minds, and our lives. For women, particularly those who are marginalized due to race, class, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity. The political has always been personal. In recent months, we've seen a deeply concerning trend of political leaders undermining the legitimacy of mental health struggles, mocking people who take medication for depression or anxiety, and really working to dismantle the very systems designed to help support those in crisis. For example, official statements from Dr. Eleanor McCann Kotz, the former assistant secretary for mental health and substance use. The HHS confirm federal policy shifts that deprioritize mental health funding and support during the Trump administration. Furthermore, media coverage from Politico and the Washington Post document these trends in detail as well. So I wanna ask you listeners, have you ever felt ashamed of needing help because of how society talks about mental health? One of the most visible examples of this is President Trump, whose administration repeatedly targets healthcare programs, reduces access to mental health care and normalizes harmful narratives that stigmatize people seeking support. His public mocking of those with disabilities and who utilize mental health services sends a dangerous message and to men in particular by promoting toxic masculinity that equates vulnerability with weakness and glorifying dominance as a sign of strength. When toxic masculinity is encouraged, it doesn't just harm men. It hurts everyone. It leads to disproportionately high Suicide rates among men increases intimate partner violence and domestic abuse, and deepens the male loneliness epidemic. It separates men from the emotional connection that they need as human beings, while also making it harder for women and marginalized communities to feel safe around men who have been conditioned to be domineering, dismissive, and emotionally unavailable. When those in power promote the idea that mental health struggles are a weakness or a sign of personal failure, it directly contributes to fear, shame, and silence and silence can be deadly. Now let's take a moment to talk about abortion access. I. The Trump administration's efforts to eliminate it are not pro-life. They are anti-woman. Stripping away a woman's right to make decisions about her own body is dehumanizing. It removes bodily autonomy and replaces it with government control. And the main outcome isn't that more women will joyfully choose motherhood. It's actually causing more women to die from pregnancy related complications due to lack of access to care. In fact, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states clearly that abortion bans are, quote, a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine and they do nothing but harm patients. end quote. Furthermore, a 2021 study published in The Lancet, which is one of the longest standing and most prestigious medical journals, found that maternal mortality rates increase in states with the most restrictive abortion bans. these policies are not saving lives. They're endangering them. So if you've ever felt rage or despair over these restrictions, know that you are not alone, and that rage and despair is not unfounded. True support for life means ensuring that every woman has access to affordable, comprehensive healthcare across their lifespan, especially during pregnancy and the postpartum period. This means guaranteeing things like paid maternity and paternity leave, accessible and affordable childcare, high quality preschool, and funding for women to pursue higher education. If the Trump administration were truly pro-life and pro-women, it would have championed policies to improve their life, not to restrict their choices. But instead, we see the weaponization of moral ideology and religion to justify neglect, harm, and political gain. The Trump administration has worked hard to cut Medicaid, which is something that we have to talk about here. Again, Medicaid is a program that provides healthcare to one in five women in the US, including vital mental health services. These cuts are not abstract. They mean fewer therapy sessions, longer wait lists, and many people getting no care at all. According to a 2020 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 60% of adult Medicaid enrollments with mental illness are women. That means that women, especially women in marginalized communities, are being hit the hardest and are being hit at disproportionate levels by Medicaid cuts. So why is this happening? Well, one thing that we really need to look at here is the myth of the bootstraps. This is a tired, harmful belief that everyone should just be able to pull themself up by their bootstraps, and that if people simply worked harder, they wouldn't need public assistance, and that healthcare is a privilege to be earned rather than a human right. But this isn't just outdated thinking. It's extremely dangerous. During his first term, Trump tried to roll back Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, a move that would've left millions without coverage. He also pushed for block grants to cap funding and proposed work requirements for Medicaid enrollees. Now, think about this. Who gets punished under these types of roles and policies? Those that get punished are disproportionately women. Women who are unpaid caregivers, disabled women, survivors of abuse. Women juggling unstable jobs without benefits. These requirements ignore the reality and punish the most vulnerable among us. Meanwhile, the Trump administration undermines mental health parody laws by expanding access to short-term health plans that don't require any coverage in the realm of mental health. Many of these kind of plans that Trump promotes excludes coverage for antidepressants or therapy altogether. As Brene Brown has said, we don't have to do it all alone, we were never meant to. At her time therapy, we see every day the emotional fallout of broken systems. Our clients are not failing. They are fighting. They're navigating trauma, grief, parenting, poverty and pain in a society that tells them to hustle harder while pulling the rug out from under them. If that sounds like your experience, please know that support exists and we are here for you. Our therapists are here to help and we understand exactly what you're going through. let's not forget, even before the Trump era, women's health was vastly underfunded and under-researched, but his administration actively cut funding for key women's health research initiatives, including the ones focused on postpartum depression, trauma, and chronic pain syndromes that disproportionately affect women. In 2019, the Trump administration disbanded the Office of Women's Health Research at the CDC and reduced funding for NIH projects focused on gender disparities in health outcomes. These moves make it harder to develop evidence-based treatments that actually work for women. Dr. Janice Clayton, director of the NIH, office of Research on Women's Health, noted in a public statement that failing to fund research on women's mental health keeps us decades behind in our ability to diagnose and treat the conditions that affect half the population. But it wasn't just about money. The Trump administration also attempted to control the very language that researchers could use. In 2017, a policy shift widely condemned by the scientific community and the CDC was reportedly directed to avoid them using words such as diversity, vulnerable entitlement, transgender fetus, evidence-based and science-based in official budget documents. Other reports revealed pressure to also avoid terms like gender feminine L-G-B-T-Q, advocacy and even the word women. And of course, in 2025, we have seen a renewed effort in that directive and there has been moves by the administration to ban all of these words and more from any type of federally funded research. as Dr. Rush Holt, former congressman and CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science said at the time, the words that we use are a reflection of the science that we do. If you were unable to talk about the science, you were unable to do it. This kind of censorship is not just political posturing. It's a direct assault on scientific integrity, and it's one that delays progress, hides truth and causes real harm to real people. Nowhere is it more clear than in the area of cancer research. Anti-intellectualism, budget cuts and the suppression of scientific language have slowed critical advancements in cancer prevention and treatment. Some cancers disproportionately affect women, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and endometrial cancer. These are not just statistics. They're lived realities for millions of women and families. Trump era policies have made it harder to fund, study, and speak truthfully about the full scope of these issues. That's more than a bureaucratic failure. It's an insult to cancer patients, their caregivers, and researchers working towards a cure. At her time therapy, we support women with cancer and their caregivers. Whether professional or informal caregivers, this is one of our specialty areas, so we know firsthand the trauma, anxiety, and depression that shows up when people are facing the uncertainty of a cancer diagnosis or the grief of losing someone too soon to this horrible disease. We also see how the erosion of healthcare access and scientific support leaves clients feeling abandoned, angry, and afraid. But please know that you're not alone and you're not invisible. Your fight matters, and we are here to walk you through it. So here's the most important thing that I want you to walk away with today. Seeking help for your mental health is an active resistance. It says I matter. My needs matter. My wellbeing matters even if society tries to tell me otherwise. So whether you use insurance or pay out of pocket, whether you go to a community clinic or see a therapist online, or you join a support group, you are doing something powerful. You are rejecting shame. You're rejecting stigma, and you're stepping into your own healing. If you're afraid to reach out because you are worried about how you'll be judged or what it says about you, please note this, you are not alone. Millions of women feel that same fear, but they're finding a way through it, and you can too. As Andre Lord said, caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It's self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. If today's episode resonated with you, here's what you can do next. Share this episode with someone impacted by Healthcare Rollbacks. Visit her time therapy to connect with a feminist oriented therapist. Register to vote and stay informed about what's happening in your state so you know which candidate to vote for or to vote out of office. Use the Five Calls app to contact your elected officials about issues that matter to you. And lastly, please leave us a review and consider becoming a subscriber for $3 a month on buzzsprout, or join Patreon and support the podcast in order to gain access to exclusive content and conversations with the her Time to Talk team. Your support helps us keep putting out content that empowers women to take charge of their mental health and to fight for justice.