Episode Summary

This episode brings one of our favorite conversations from Rachel's previous podcast, The Mental Health Entrepreneur, to the Mental Health Evolution audience. Dr. James Cordova is a researcher and clinician who has spent over two decades studying relationship health, and Matt Rubin is the entrepreneur who helped bring that research to life through Arammu, a company built around a checkup and maintenance-based model of care for couples. Together, they join Rachel to make the case for something the mental health field has long overlooked: treating relationships as a health system that deserves proactive, preventative care rather than crisis-only intervention. Dr. Cordova traces the origins of this work back to his time volunteering at a crisis center, where he noticed month after month that relationship issues were the leading reason people called in for help.

The conversation explores how Arammu's relationship checkup works in practice, what it looks like across the full spectrum of couples from newly married to severely distressed, how it fits into existing clinical workflows, and why brief, evidence-based tools like this one may be key to addressing the mental health access crisis. Rachel and her guests also discuss insurance billing, the surprising uptake from the military, and the broader vision of shifting mental health care toward a primary care model where early and frequent support becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Connect with Dr. James Cordova and Matt Rubin

Arammu: The Proactive Relationship Checkup

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Music Credit: Music by Zach Harrison