First Line is a national education brand about modern depression care. Our whole argument fits in one sentence: you do not have to wait until you are out of options. The effective, clinician-supervised treatments that exist today are worth understanding and asking about earlier than most people are told, not only after years of struggle.
We are not a clinic and we are not a substitute for one. We are a place to understand what depression is, what today's care actually includes, and how to have the conversation that moves things forward. What you do with that understanding, with a qualified clinician, is up to you.
How we write
Mental health is a field crowded with overpromises. We hold ourselves to a plain standard, and you should hold us to it too.
- No claims of cures or guaranteed outcomes. Depression is treatable, not solved by slogans.
- No invented statistics. Where we do not have a solid figure, we do not manufacture one.
- No fake experts or borrowed credentials. We publish under the First Line brand, not fabricated author names.
- Plain language over jargon, and honest limits alongside every option.
- One clear line between education and medical advice. We do the first. Only a clinician can do the second.
How we are funded, and our sponsor
First Line is supported by a sponsorship from a single recommended provider, Brain Recovery Centers, a doctor-supervised depression and PTSD clinic in St. Peters, Missouri. It serves St. Charles County and St. Louis County in person and reaches many more patients by telemedicine, offering FDA-approved Spravato and TMS and accepting most insurance, including MO HealthNet.
We want to be transparent about what that means. Brain Recovery Centers pays to be our featured provider, and it is the only clinic we link out to. We feature it because it fits what we would suggest to someone we care about: doctor-supervised, offering the modern options we write about, and accessible to a real community. A sponsorship does not change our standards above, and it does not make this page medical advice.
Education you can trust has to be honest about how it is paid for. Ours is paid for by the provider we recommend, and we say so on every page.
A standing note on crisis
Nothing here is for emergencies. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any time, free and confidential. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911.
If you are ready to understand your options, a good place to begin is understanding depression or the modern options.