[Trigger warning: This article discusses sexual assault and trauma. If you need support, please contact the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673]
Most people dream of vacations or career milestones. Gabrielle Union dreams of something far more elusive: “I dream of peace in my body—what that feels like,” the actress shares during our conversation. “I dream of a good night’s sleep where you’re not thinking about what happens if somebody climbs through the window.”
Union has lived with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for over thirty years since being sexually assaulted at gunpoint at age 19. Despite decades of therapy, trauma dictated much of her life and true peace remained out of reach—until recently. Through the evidence-based treatment she’s received from NEMA Health, an online platform for trauma treatment, recovery has finally begun to feel possible.
Now the actress and advocate is joining the women founded, venture-backed startup as an advisor—helping bring accessible, effective care to trauma survivors like her.
The Night She Wished She Could Forget
Union was 19, a model student-athlete working a summer job at Payless, when a man entered the store just before closing time. She recalls that her body told her to run, but that her instinct was overridden. “Women are socialized that you don’t ever want to make a man uncomfortable,” she explains.
What followed was a violent assault during which Union fought for her life. She survived physically, but the psychological wounds would last decades.
Her body was left in a state of chronic hypervigilance, a common symptom of trauma survivors. “I rarely go anywhere that exchanges money without security,” she shares. “Not because I think I’m gonna get robbed, but my body feels like it’s absolutely happening.”
Union recounted how when her father arrived after the attack, she watched his face fall as he learned what happened.“I’m the prize daughter,” she explained, noting one of the first moments of the shame she would internalize for decades. “I’m the favorite… it was like his favorite toy had been broken.”
The fact that the assault occurred at the hands of a Black man added another layer of complexity for Union. “There’s this wanting to protect every other non-rapist Black man from the labels that I know were coming. That is a ton of shame.”
Clinical research shows that shame is often the primary emotion maintaining PTSD in sexual assault survivors, and the strongest predictor of PTSD severity—stronger even than the characteristics of the assault itself. For Black women like Union, this shame is compounded by having to process both the individual violation and its meaning within a racist society.
Even moments of happiness carry weight in survivors. “When I feel like, my God, I’m so happy, there’s this impending doom…they’re both on my shoulder.” Union shares, illustrating one of trauma’s cruelest thefts: the inability to fully experience joy without anticipating catastrophe.
One In Five Women Are Survivors: Your Sister, Colleague, Friend
Many picture a veteran when they think of PTSD, but research shows a different story: “The most common presentation of PTSD is actually a woman with sexual assault,” says Dr. Sofia Noori, Yale psychiatrist and NEMA Health’s CEO and cofounder.
“Interpersonal violence is twice as likely to cause PTSD as other traumas,” Dr Noori explains, adding that the layers of shame, minimization and lack of treatment access trap survivors in cycles of distress.
One in five women will experience sexual assault in their lifetime, yet the average person with PTSD waits an astounding eighteen years before receiving evidence-based treatment—eighteen years of suffering that ripples through families and workplaces while generating massive healthcare costs.
When Therapy Becomes a Hamster Wheel
Despite immediate access to therapy through Workers’ Compensation, Union spent decades in treatment that never addressed her core trauma. “Thirty years of talk therapy, of group therapy, of hypnosis—literally every kind of therapy except the one that actually works.”
Traditional talk therapy often fails trauma survivors for a specific reason: it attempts to treat trauma through discussion alone. Simply talking about feelings without techniques to reset these fear responses can inadvertently reinforce trauma patterns, and neglect treating where trauma actually lives—in the body’s nervous system.
“When you don’t do trauma therapy and you see a therapist once a week who asks you how your week is—that can actually make trauma symptoms worse,” Dr. Noori explains. She added that the most common trauma symptom is rumination.
The toll of untreated PTSD is profound, linked to higher rates of chronic illness, substance use, workplace disability and even cardiovascular disease. Even Union, despite her privilege and access to care, spent decades suffering. For the average survivor, traditional therapy’s shortcomings mean they may never receive adequate treatment.
Designing The Product They Once Needed
For each of the three women cofounders of NEMA Health, Dr. Sofia Noori, Mariam Malik, and Dr. Isobel Rosenthal, the cause is deeply personal. Dr Noori survived a sexual assault while attending college. “I didn’t know I had PTSD,” she explains. “I thought I was just screwed, which I think is what happens to a lot of people, they just think that their lives are over.”
The experience influenced her path to become a trauma-trained psychiatrist and ultimately design the treatment program that helps patients permanently recover. With $18.6 million in venture funding, NEMA Health’s founders spent two years designing a care model to solve a fundamental problem: quality trauma therapy is scarce, expensive, and often inaccessible. “Good care should be as free as we can possibly make it,” Noori insists.
The team negotiated value-based contracts with insurance companies, demonstrating that intensive trauma treatment prevents costly downstream complications. “Just like diabetes and high blood pressure, PTSD actually has treatment guidelines and a protocol for how to treat it.” explains Noori.
How CPT Actually Works: Beyond the Talking Cure
The treatment protocol Noori’s referring to is called Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), a time-limited treatment with specific skills exercises designed to rewire the brain’s fear response. CPT is one of the most studied treatments for PTSD, with over 34 randomized controlled trials demonstrating that it produces large treatment effects and consistently outperforms non-trauma-focused talk therapies.
This intensive, evidence-based approach yields powerful results: at NEMA Health, ninety-five percent of patients experience noticeable improvement in their PTSD symptoms after completing the program.
Perhaps most liberating: “CPT doesn’t even require that you share the details about your trauma,” Noori emphasizes, removing a major barrier for survivors who avoid treatment.
Why Union Keeps Telling Her Story
Yet Union is committed to sharing her story in pursuit of spreading awareness and demanding change. Her journey is both extraordinary and heartbreakingly ordinary: extraordinary because she endured thirty years in the public eye while living with PTSD—and has devoted much of her life to the cause; ordinary because millions of women share her experiences of being dismissed, misdiagnosed, or trapped in therapies that never touch the core of their trauma.
Sharing her experience takes a physical toll on Union, yet she believes the cost of willingly stepping into discomfort is worth the lasting impact. “It kind of makes me physically ill, but mentally, logically, I’m like, you can save people. And so I just suck it up.”
When recounting how she’s often labeled as “brave,” Union is adamant that “no part of [her] feels brave,” and that her advocacy role is necessary for “the greater good.”
“It feels like the right thing to do to keep humanity on the train on the tracks,” she explains. Yet what she’s describing—willingly choosing to take action despite it feeling scary and painful—is perhaps the very definition of courage.
Making Recovery Possible, Not Aspirational
NEMA Health has already made significant progress toward their vision of affordable, accessible recovery. The platform is currently in-network with major plans and offers treatment across 14 states.
Union envisions further potential: “I would love to see partnership with Workers’ Comp and all insurance companies, because you ultimately save money when people get help quicker.”
Her final message to survivors is direct: “There’s another way”—one she believes in so deeply, she’s formally joined the company.
The partnership between a Hollywood powerhouse and a team of female founders might be exactly what it takes to make trauma recovery widely accessible and affordable—because these survivors refuse to let another generation wait thirty years for peace.
And while Union is still working toward peace in her body, she’s successfully reclaimed another emotion that was previously stolen: “It’s giving me hope, which I can’t say I’ve had a ton of.”
Resources for support:
- RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673
- Crisis Text Line: Text HELLO to 741741
- Trauma Survivor Guide (co-created by Gabrielle Union)
Megan Bruneau, M.A. Psych is a therapist, executive coach, and the founder of Off The Field Executive & Personal Coaching. She hosts The Failure Factor podcast featuring conversations with entrepreneurs about the setbacks that led to their success.