Decolonizing Care
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
What does decolonization have to do with mental health care?
Decolonization is about ending the domination of one person or group over another person or group, with its origin in historical settler colonial models of dehumanization and exploitation, and all of its current forms including:
Individualizing mental health care and excluding social, community, historical elements
Reducing mental health care to the experience of consuming a product provided by a corporate entity.
Ignoring the role of social factors influencing mental health issues
Overlooking client/person strengths and approaches to healing and self-care including religious, spiritual/ritualistic, indigenous and holistic models.
Overlooking the sociohistorical struggles of client/person ancestors, and how trauma and struggle in the individual is also historical and part of family history, including the major world-historical human traumas economic oppression, slavery, and colonial domination and disruption of democratic systems.
Making invisible indigenous people and the history of stolen land and current land-back demand for justice.
Reinforcing settler colonial, white bodied supremacy culture, reproducing anti-Blackness, continuing racist discourses against People of the Global Majority (PGM)
Reproducing patriarchal systems of domination
Reinforcing the myth that human beings are flawed or sick if they don’t function within a individualized, capitalist social/economic model.
Rendering invisible the role of nature and the environment as an ancestor as well as a key element of spirituality.
Mental health care providers play a key role in either reinforcing colonial domination, or disrupting it and respecting client/person agency.
The principles of decolonizing care as I list them above, in my opinion, are consistent with the NASW’s Social Worker Code of Ethics, which my professional licenses require me to respect and follow.
My Ongoing Process of Acknowledging and Overcoming White Bodied Supremacy
As a practicing engaged Buddhist, I understand that we are all agents operating in history, with historical forces acting upon and through us, and we find our agency in the ethical act of taking responsibility for what we do, which includes how we further or disrupt oppressive actions. In this way, I value the act of accepting the harm I reproduce due to my social position as a cis-het, white-bodied male of European origin while I also act to undo, reduce, and repair that harm while I am alive in this world.
Courses and trainings I have participated in to help with this process include:
Confronting Capitalism
Radical Genealogy
Somatic Abolitionism for White Bodied People
White and Awakening in Sangha
Racial Justice Skills for White Practitioners
Mental Health Workers’ Pledge for Palestine
I support the USA Palestine Mental Health Network, participate in their programming, and am a signatory of the Mental Health Workers’ Pledge for Palestine.
Signatory, Apartheid-Free Network
Native Land Acknowledgment
I understand human emotion, motivation and behavior through the lens of how human beings experience fairness, safety, love, kindness, creativity, and fulfillment. I see these as values that inform good, effective psychotherapy. These are values that respect history: when unfairness and injustice occurred, it is important to recognize it as a step to healing— especially if those harms have not been repaired.
It is with these values in mind that I want to respectfully acknowledge that the land on which I live and work is the occupied/unceded/ seized territory of the Kumeyaay People. You can find updated tribal news and events here.
You can find more information on the genocidal history of the California Missions here.
Click here for information on the history of the California state flag as a symbol of racial prejudice.
Click here for more information why native land acknowledgments matter.
Resources on Decolonization
PBS Decolonizing Mental Health Series
How to Decolonize Mental Health Treatment for BIPOC Yes! Magazine
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies Resmaa Menakem
Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice Jennifer Mullan, PsyD
Decolonizing Trauma Work: Indigenous Stories and Strategies Renee Linklater, Lewis Mehl-Madrona
Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction Shira Hassan
Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety Cara Page, Erica Woodland
Healing Justice: Holistic Self-Care for Change Makers Loretta Pyles
