Helaina Hovitz Regal is an award-winning journalist, author, and mental health advocate whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Newsweek, VICE, Fortune, Reader’s Digest, and dozens of other national publications. She writes with rare authenticity on mental health, trauma, neurodivergence, addiction, and resilience — drawing on both deep research and lived experience.

Helaina is the author of After 9/11, a memoir about surviving the World Trade Center attacks as a child and the untreated PTSD that followed — covered by CBS, PBS NewsHour, the TODAY Show, PEOPLE, The Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal. As a regular contributor to rtor.org, she writes the kind of clear, compassionate, research-grounded content that families and individuals navigating mental health challenges need most.