The DSM, which is the standard diagnostic text tool used by mental health professionals in the United States, has historically been used as a tool to pathologize, codify, and regulate behaviors that “deviate” from societal norms and expectations. Prior to 1973, homosexuality was listed as a mental illness for nearly a century. The early roots of psychology included pseudoscientific practices such as phrenology and biased IQ testing to enforce racial hierarchies and perpetuate European colonialism. Our field began in carceral practices such as institutionalizing individuals in facilities with physical restraints and performing non-consensual medical procedures such as lobotomies. 

Just as humans have been entrenched in oppressive systems and continue to fight for liberation, so do we as therapists in a field that has historically been complicit in upholding these systems. Today, sanism — discrimination against those with perceived mental disorders – continues to affect the most vulnerable people in intersectional ways. The inequities are evident in that mental health conditions overwhelmingly impact Black and Brown communities, our unhoused community members, and those with minoritized identities. 

Given this, we approach our therapeutic practice from the framework of liberation psychology and multicultural counseling, which aims to honor the role that intersectional experiences of oppression and that cultural/identity factors have on the way clients show up in the therapeutic space. We dream of a world in which therapy can be a collaborative, flexible, liberatory processing space that’s a safe container for healing. Like moths drawn to the light, a place in which you can return home, back to yourself – over and over again.