The mental health industry talks endlessly about self-care. Workshops on burnout. Webinars on compassion fatigue. Seminars on setting boundaries. Yet the same leaders preaching rest are answering emails at midnight, skipping supervision, and running on fumes they won’t admit to anyone—including themselves.
This edition of Inspiring Women in Mental Health, 2026 is more about interrogating a paradox that’s become too comfortable: we’ve built an industry around healing while quietly breaking the people doing the work.
The women featured here aren’t interested in platitudes. They’ve done the uncomfortable work of turning the lens inward, asking questions that don’t have easy answers, and rebuilding systems that were designed to fail the very people they’re meant to serve. They’ve confronted their own biases, sat with their triggers, and learned that leadership in mental health isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about being honest enough to admit when you don’t.
Our cover story is Michele LaFemina, Clinical Director at Pathways Treatment Center in New Jersey. She doesn’t manage a clinic. She orchestrates energy. Within minutes of meeting someone, she knows whether trust can grow or whether walls will stay intact. It’s not instinct alone—it’s two decades of holding space for people carrying trauma they’ve never named. Michele’s approach is disarmingly simple: no cookie-cutter plans, no rigid protocols. Just a relentless commitment to creating a tell-all safe haven where healing can actually happen. What sets her apart isn’t just her clinical skill—it’s her willingness to practice what she demands of others. She sets boundaries without guilt, seeks supervision without shame, and refuses to lead from depletion. That integrity cascades. When leaders model honesty, entire teams shift.
This edition also profiles women who’ve rewritten the rules entirely. Leaders who took childhood trauma research and embedded it into state healthcare systems. Founders who eliminated year-long waitlists by redesigning how pediatric mental health actually works. Innovators who built organizations where care isn’t transactional—it’s relational, trauma-informed, and designed around the reality of how families live.
We’ve also tackled a question the industry keeps sidestepping: why is mental health still being treated like it’s separate from biology? The article explores how women leaders are dismantling the symptom-chasing model and replacing it with approaches grounded in trauma science, gender-specific research, and infrastructure that screens early rather than reacts late.
The thread connecting all of this? A refusal to accept broken systems just because they’ve always been broken.
Mental health doesn’t need more rhetoric. It needs leaders willing to rebuild from the foundation—starting with themselves. The women in this edition are doing exactly that. Not perfectly. But honestly. And that’s where real change begins.
