What's The Key To Equal Access And Treatment In Mental Health?

HOW MELODY LI IS TACKLING THE BARRIERS OF A WHITE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM WITH HER ORGANIZATION, INCLUSIVE THERAPISTS

If you’re Black, Indigenous, or a person of color (BIPOC), therapy may not always feel like the safe, affirming space that we all need. Not all therapists are trained in (or even aware of) the huge weight that microaggressions, intergenerational trauma, or racism, in general, can take on your mental health. 

It can feel like a gamble when you sit down with a therapist. There are so many questions that can swirl around your mind: Will they validate my identity? Do they understand the microaggressions I’m facing? Can they help me work through my racial trauma? Can they even relate to a single thing I’m talking about?

That’s where Inclusive Therapists comes into play. Founder, Melody Li, found that so many of her friends and clients were being burned by therapists that minimized or neglected crucial and vulnerable parts of their identities. Now she’s working to “decolonize” the mental health care system which has been largely focused on white, heteronormative, patriarchal, and gender-binary practices. The first step to fixing this issue is simple: help people of marginalized communities find therapists that can offer the culturally affirmative and responsive therapy they deserve. 

We sat down with her to learn a little bit more about her own experiences and what resources are available to marginalized populations through Inclusive Therapists. 

IDM: Would you mind sharing your own mental health journey?

Melody: I identify as a queer female therapist of color, and I'm also a mental health justice activist. I’m an immigrant. I was born in Hong Kong while it was under British rule, and I grew up in an oppressive system. I ended up internalizing a lot of white supremacy. I really learned to hate my identity. I hated being in my skin. I saw a lot of power structures that I didn't find a sense of safety or validation in. 

My parents were privileged enough to move us to Canada, and I had to learn how to thrive in a new environment that didn’t understand or accept me. There's a high immigrant population in Canada, and I started to see that other immigrant children, children of immigrants, or people of color also shared similar experiences in having to navigate multi-cultures. We were shown that the system isn’t made for us, the system isn’t built to help us succeed. These were things that I saw growing up, but I never had language for.

When I entered into mental health, my eyes really opened to the bigger picture. I saw how deeply entrenched white supremacy is in mental health itself. I just realized that most of the writers of my curriculum were white. Most of my supervisors were white. Most of my colleagues were white. 

After doing my own healing work, I decided there has to be a simpler and safer way for people with marginalized identities to find a therapist that gets them. A way to find a therapist that has done their own identity healing work — such as racial trauma healing. And they’ve really examined the roots of their own biases.

“When people with marginalized identities are not accessing care, they get blamed. We hear that a lot: There’s a stigma in their culture against mental health. But we need to ask ourselves how did that stigma come to be there? There are conversations that communities of color have within themselves that say therapy is not safe.”

IDM: What is Inclusive Therapists all about?

Melody: So Inclusive Therapists has a couple of branches. One is a directory, to make it safer for marginalized communities to find a therapist. We also offer inclusivity training to our community members. We're committed to doing that training together as a community because it holds us accountable to one another. Mental health shouldn’t be an individual thing. We grow and we thrive in community with one another. 

And then, in addition to that, we are also therapists that are committed to activism. We are identifying barriers in our own field. That's kind of where we're really turning our focus — to fix what’s broken in our field first and then we need to create some policy change. We want to make those systemic changes.

“The client in me has been burned in therapy by really well-meaning white therapists. They couldn’t hold space for the experience that I have as a queer woman of color, and I’d be gaslighted in sessions.”

IDM: What qualifies a therapist to be a part of your directory? 

Melody: Great question. Essentially we invite therapists that are social justice-oriented. It’s essential for social justice-oriented therapists to understand culturally affirming and responsive practices. Our expectation isn't for the therapist to know it all or to be an expert of it all. But are they interested in continuing to learn? So when therapists apply to be part of our community, there are two types of memberships. One is a scholar membership. Anyone that is a learner is free to join. And there aren't really requirements there, because we welcome all learners to join, to learn with us, and to be in community.

For therapists that want a profile in our directory, they have to write an essay. They have to apply. And they have to be able to describe their social justice-oriented practices, training that they have done, and if they specialize in working with a particular identity. We also require them to share their racial identity work and what their approach is to dismantling white supremacy within the mental health field. If they're not able to articulate that, that's okay. We put them into the scholar membership level, and they can continue to learn. They can continue to reapply until they get to a place where this becomes a more integrated part of who they are and how they practice.

IDM: Do you believe that people of color can still receive proper treatment from someone that doesn’t look like them? For example, is a white therapist ever able to truly understand the needs of the BIPOC community? 

Melody: I love that question. When I started Inclusive Therapists, I had a decision to make — do I include white therapists in our community? And I decided, absolutely. But there are requirements there. It really requires the white therapist to do their own racial trauma and healing work. And to be very specific, it's white racial trauma healing. We all need racial trauma healing — it just looks different for white people and for people whose ancestors may be oppressors or colonizers. White racial trauma goes deeper than just feelings of shame or outward violence or hatred. But it's going to ‘how did my lineage get here?’

A lot of this work is demanded of by POC, but this work is never demanded of white therapists. So they don't know their lineage. They don't know the story. They don't know the original traumas that happened that really made their ancestors have to decide ‘do I maintain my heritage or do I choose power?’ People also need to ask: ‘How have my ancestors and lineage benefited from systems built to advance white bodies and keep BIPOC bodies oppressed? How did my people contribute to these injustices, directly (through genocide and land theft) or indirectly (through complacency and silence)?’ And because our field is so predominantly white, this work needs to start happening ASAP because a lot of harm is being done.

“Taking that leap to say ‘I’m going to give therapy a chance.’ That, in itself, takes a lot of courage and vulnerability.”

IDM: What has your experience with mental health care for marginalized communities been? What barriers have you seen? 

Melody: When people with marginalized identities are not accessing care, they get blamed. We hear that a lot: There's a stigma in their culture against mental health. But we need to ask ourselves how did that stigma come to be there? There are conversations that communities of color have within themselves that say therapy is not safe. We believe we have to keep our stories within our communities. But why is that? It’s because the mental health field comes from a Eurocentric lens. The people that do seek help may work with a white therapist — that’s trained in a white supremacist system — and they realize it doesn't feel right.  Taking that leap to say ‘I'm going to give therapy a chance.’ That, in itself, takes a lot of courage and vulnerability. 

Then comes the accessibility barriers. ‘Can I find a therapist that is affordable to me, that can work during hours when I don't have to work?’ I'm actually loving teletherapy right now because barriers such as transportation and child care aren’t as prevalent. There’s flexibility for people to hop out during their lunch hour and not have to drive from place to place or ride the bus. These barriers have been real issues. And to add on, will my therapist really get me?  Can they even hold space for me later?

Or the flip side of it is that the burden falls on POC therapists, who then have to go above and beyond to extend care. We just have very full caseloads and are working ourselves sick, or we’re having to offer a lot of sliding scale spots. So then our financial well-being is being impacted, which is another form of injustice.

IDM: You talk a lot about decolonizing mental health care. Can you explain what that means and what the process looks like? 

Melody: The system is built to normalize white behavior and to pathologize the other. The client in me has been burned in therapy by really well-meaning white therapists. They couldn’t hold space for the experience that I have as a queer woman of color, and I’d be gaslighted in sessions. I started to ask ‘Is it me? Am I doing therapy wrong?’ It’s a very common experience for a lot of BIPOC.

Part of decolonizing mental health is challenging the belief that the therapist is always the expert. The expert-client relationship really needs to be reexamined. If a therapist doesn't think that my race or my culture or my skin is a contributor to what I'm experiencing, I may begin to wonder ‘maybe there's something that I'm missing, or maybe they're seeing something that I don't.’ That’s the impact of racial gaslighting that can happen in therapeutic spaces. But who is really the expert in the room? It's the client. 

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Learn more about the work and mission of Inclusive Therapists and search the inclusive therapist directory on their website. Or learn more about Melody Li’s work on her website.