War Vets, What If Your Equine Therapy Horse Rejects You?

In this issue, we feature stories of both hope and concern: A politician and combat vet who resigned amidst a spectacular fall from grace  finds solace in equine therapy.  Insurance companies continue denying life-saving treatment to people with eating disorders. 

Plus, questions to ask your father, and how some depressed Gen Z’ers become obsessed with looks, calories and weight-loss pills.

‘You can’t B.S. a horse’: How equine therapy healed one combat marine

Nathan Fletcher had hit rock bottom. Once a rising political star who had served in the state legislature and as a member of the San Diego Board of Supervisors, the  former Marine  had never dealt with the trauma he’d experienced during combat in Iraq, much less a violent childhood. 

Then he was accused of sexual harassment and assault. He denied the charges, which eventually were dismissed, but admitted to having an affair. He resigned from his position and checked himself into an Arizona rehab program that used horses to help people recover from trauma.

  “No one ends up in rehab on a winning streak, but my collapse had been pretty spectacular,” he wrote in a commentary for The War Horse, a nonprofit newsroom that covers the experience of veterans and combatants. “I had gone from one of the most powerful political figures in San Diego to a complete outcast.”

At the  rehab facility, a nurse overseeing equine therapy introduced him to  a horse named Star  – and she immediately raced away from him. 

“Even the horse hates me, I thought,” wrote Fletcher.

“She can feel your pain,” the therapist explained. “All of it. The hurt. The shame. The anxiety. The regret. And it scares her.” 

The therapist explained that Fletcher had to be fully present “to have any chance” with Star – and eventually, things changed. Fletcher described the journey that led him to bond with this beautiful horse – and the healing it brought him. You can read his essay here.

‘Going home to die’: How insurance companies deny care for eating disorders

Eli Cahan, a Rosalynn Carter fellow for mental health journalism, has written a riveting takeout about insurance companies’ denying care for eating disorders for Rolling Stone. He begins by examining the case of a woman in Washington, D.C., who developed an eating disorder as a young teen.

‘When puberty hit Katernina Rinaldi in middle school, it hit hard, fast, and earlier than everyone else,” he writes. “Quickly, Rinaldi started gaining weight; her body started changing, too. As she puts it, “I had curves.”’’

Rinaldi no longer liked or felt safe in her own body, especially since its development was accompanied by unwanted male attention. She began exercising heavily and skipping meals in an attempt to stay thin. By the time she was in college, she “worked out relentlessly” and made herself vomit. Diagnosed with an eating disorder, she cycled in and out of treatment. 

However, insurers often cut off treatment or denied claims for reasons like missing a phone call from a caseworker or being labeled “treatment-resistant.” One even recommended she transition into “palliative care.”

“As in “going home to die,” Rinaldi told Rolling Stone.

For his in-depth investigation, Cahan spent 18 months documenting how insurers are using loopholes in a mental health parity law to avoid paying for expensive inpatient care. He spent 18 months interviewing dozens of patients, physicians, attorneys, advocates and lawmakers, and reviewed hundreds of pages of files regarding patients’ journeys and insurance denials. 

The article  examines the same kinds of insurance industry practices that journalist Melanie Haiken found in “Deadly Denials,” her award-winning series published last year in MindSite News. You can read Cahan’s compelling story for Rolling Stone here.