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Alan Meyer

Alan Meyer

Dr. Aaron Meyer, psychiatrist and first Behavioral Health Officer for the City of San Diego, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego.

Jun 30, 2026

8:21
Is- tell me about a leader that you worked with that had a lasting impact on you.
8:27
Um, I can think of a couple.
8:28
One that really comes to mind is, um, Steve Jensen.
8:34
Um, he was a, he was a leader of mine, and it wasn't about, uh, about him as a leader, is it was so how he engaged with you to find out what is it that's important to you as an individual on my team.
8:52
How can I help mentor you, coach you, teach you, uh, and make you, uh, better as an individual one interaction at a time? And, um, you know, one, one statement that really came to mind for me with, with Steve Jensen, you know, when he went to the UK or, or China and decided to open that market, and then we shut down the market, um, there was one thing he said to me that, that has s- stuck with me for a long time.
9:23
And he, he could, he could have come back and said, "You know what? I went there, tried to get this market open, and woe is me.
9:30
Now I don't know what I'm gonna do as a job here." But the, the statement that really stuck with me, Brian, was he said to himself, "In order for things to change for me, I need to change me." And he could have went in any direction, but he didn't.

11 MINS LATER

21:07
Can you tell us a l- little bit about that business?
8:13
So what do you see as the biggest challenge in integrating mental health care with the rest of the healthcare system, so this way hopefully it can be treated more effectively?
8:26
Yeah.
8:26
I think the, uh...
8:29
I mean, that's a multilayered question.
8:31
So federally, I think there's problems with how mental health has been structured because of the sins of the past.
8:37
You know, we have institutionalization that happened in the '60s, eh, earlier than the '60s, and then in the '60s there was an effort to de-institutionalize, and with that there was a federal disincentive to pay for mental health treatment in standalone inpatient psychiatric facilities.
8:54
So there's a, a ban on Medicaid reimbursement for beds that are more than, more than 16 beds.
10:16
How do we help people understand that mental and physical health are inseparable?

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