Therapy is political

Yes, I said it. Therapy is political and you cannot make me believe otherwise. I wish this wasn’t the case and it is. The reality is that mental health is formed by systems and when those systems are not equal for everyone that creates divide.

Unfortunately, not everyone has access to mental health care. Many people use insurance, through their jobs - but what happens when someone doesn’t have healthcare access through a job? That changes the system. They then have to utilize community services, which come with its own set of issues. Workers are often underpaid, have huge caseloads, are burnt out, treatment may be short term, and those services may be designed to reach and maintain quotas. For the individual trying to receive services, it could be cultural mismatch, maybe they have to take a bus across town or don’t have access to transportation. You can see how this goes. Btw I am not bashing community mental health - it can be helpful and have good intentions. Furthermore, access is also affected by policies, laws, disability, race, gender, lived experience, and so much more.

Therapy is all about lived experience. That’s what we’re processing in sessions; peoples lives. When people/clients lived experience is harmed by society ( by the government, president. ice, media, corporations & institutions, etc), you can’t deny that it is affected by politics, control, power, and money. If we deny or dismiss this reality, we are also continuing to uphold unhelpful beliefs about marginalized populations, power structures, and are actually also causing harm to clients. Therapists abide by an ethical code, and to deny current reality is simply unethical.

Examples of things that affect therapy, healthcare access, and lived experience that are political:

Therapist laws and ethics

Insurance laws and eligibility

Age, sex, race, gender

Community funding

Disability

Immigration policy

Criminal Justice policy

Education policies

Housing polcices

Labor laws

Reproductive rights

Privacy laws

Therapy is political because it honors context of your story and life. It’s not just about personal choices- it’s about the systems that we live in and move throughout. To create space for healing and understanding, we have to be honest about how mental health is constructed, what it looks like, how that affects the society we live in, and how individuals are impacted.