Our Story
Seeking mental health care can be a vulnerable process.
For marginalized communities, that vulnerability is compounded by systemic barriers, the neglect towards collective trauma, and a shortage of culturally responsive and identity-affirming care. Inclusive Therapists was founded in 2019 by Melody Li to interrupt this injustice by creating a social justice- and liberation-oriented mental health directory, community, and resource hub centered on people with intersecting marginalized identities.
As our community grew, so did our impetus to move beyond access and resources. Amid escalating global and local crises, our members mobilized to extend mutual aid and collective care.
From this momentum, with Dr. Ebony Butler as our president, Mental Health Liberation was born in 2021 as a movement-based branch grounded in collective healing, political education, and systems transformation – guided by those most directly and critically impacted.
A Liberation-Rooted Ecosystem
We intentionally cultivate our work outside of charity frameworks that perpetuate the nonprofit industrial complex. We rejected top-down approaches that masquerade as “help”, yet ultimately disempower Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color/Global Majority communities (BIPOC/PGM).
Instead, we center interdependence, intergenerational movement and collective power building. This ecological, liberation-rooted approach sustains our movement. We are nurturing future generations of BIPOC/PGM therapists, mental health justice advocates, and organizers who will carry this work forward.
Learn more in the How We Work section below. We hope to gain your support!
Liberate, Heal, Thrive
Key Milestones
- 2021 – BIPOC Therapy Fund: Launched to extend 12 free therapy sessions (with personalized care-coordination) for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color/Global Majority participants.
- 2022 – Liberatory Student Support Circle: Launched to nurture emerging BIPOC/PGM mental health justice advocates and student organizers.
- 2023 – Collective Power & Resource Sharing: Forming strategic and reciprocal partnerships with fellow values-aligned organizations to co-create collective care and educational offerings.
- 2024 – Fortify Safety & Access: Deepened collective trauma-informed initiatives centering migrant and undocumented communities, and Trans communities facing escalating threats. We also strengthened Collective Care & Safety protocols for care providers.
- 2025 – Collective Healing Expansion: Evolving beyond a therapy model to integrate culturally and ancestrally rooted healing practices, aligned with Healing Justice and decolonial values.
Pressing Ahead
In 2026, we will expand collaborative Collective Care & Safety offerings for community members, practitioners, organizers, and activists striving toward collective liberation. This next phase builds on our commitment to nourishing and equipping our ecosystem for sustainable movement-building.
We invite you to learn how this growing ecosystem of care continues to reimagine and transform mental health care.
Our Mission & Vision
Mental Health Liberation is a grassroots, LGBTQ+ BIPOC–led nonprofit rooted in collective liberation and Healing Justice principles. We center the wellbeing of marginalized communities by advancing care practices that are culturally responsive, collective trauma-informed, and identity-affirming. We co-create offerings uplifting community care, safety, and healing – as we dismantle the harms of the mental health industrial complex.
Our mission includes:
- Bridging Black, Brown, Indigenous and People of Color/Global Majority with culturally responsive, collective trauma-informed, and identity-affirming mental health care
- Empowering future generations of racialized therapists and mental health justice advocates through peer support, mentorship and education
- Dismantling systemic barriers and inequities through advocacy, community education, and movement organizing
- Reclaiming healing practices, in connection with Land and lineage, centering communities that have been systemically oppressed, displaced, harmed, and neglected
We are an ecosystem of healers, educators, and movement leaders working at the intersections of Racial Justice, 2SLGBTQIA+ Liberation, Neurodivergence, and Disability Justice. We build grassroots power through collaboration, cross-movement solidarity, and long-term community organizing – until we’re ALL FREE.
Free Therapy Sessions Received Through our BIPOC Therapy Fund
BIPOC Therapy Fund Participants Receiving Free Services
BIPOC Mental Health Students Receiving Peer & Mentor Support
You make this possible, thank you!
Support Our Work
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Who does Mental Health Liberation focus on?
Black, Indigenous and People of Color/Global Majority, prioritizing individuals with intersecting marginalized identities (e.g., 2SLGBTQIA+, Neurodivergent and Disabled communities).
What are your initiatives?
- BIPOC Healing & Therapy Fund: Free, culturally-responsive and collective-trauma informed mental health services centering Black, Indigenous and Communities of Color/Global Majority, prioritizing people with intersecting marginalized identities.
- Liberatory Student Support Circle: Free peer and mentor support uplifting Black, Indigenous, and Global Majority students pursuing careers in mental health.
We invite you to click here and sign up for our newsletter to get notified when new programs launch.
How can my business or organization support you?
Thank you for uplifting BIPOC mental health & healing.
Can I start a fundraiser for you?
Thank you for your generosity. It would be our honor!
Please click here and fill out our fundraiser form. We are happy to set up a custom fundraising page for you to share with your circles.
Why is this work important?
Numerous studies illustrate the systemic neglect, exclusion, and harm that Communities of Color experience within the mental health care system. BI&POC individuals with intersecting marginalized identities, such as those within the 2SLGBTQ+, Neurodivergent, and Disabled communities, encounter even more severe barriers, including discrimination, rejection, stigmatization, gatekeeping, and culturally inappropriate practices.
The mental health profession is predominantly composed of white, cisgender, non-queer, neurotypical, and non-Disabled individuals. Consequently, the field perpetuates ideologies that are white-centric, cis-hetero-patriarchal, classist, and ableist, deeply ingrained across every level, from education and training to clinical practice.
These entrenched inequities and structural violence not only limit access to healing but also restrict career opportunities for individuals from BI&POC and intersecting marginalized communities. The consequences are painful and undeniable.
Until we collectively dismantle the colonial and oppressive structures embedded within the mental health field, we must first harness our collective power to reimagine and reclaim healing for ourselves. Our mission is to bridge BI&POC communities with quality, culturally responsive therapy and empower future generations of Clinicians of Color. We hope that you'll support our mission.
What is an ecological model?
Our approach is rooted in an ecological model, a term that some may liken to "grassroots," but transcends that definition. We operate distinctively from traditional charities or entities within the nonprofit industrial complex. We adamantly reject the notions of white saviorism, white feminism, and any other top-down approaches masquerading as "help," which perpetuate harm upon Black, Indigenous, and Communities of Color.
Community and collective liberation are at the heart of our work. What defines us is the cultivation of an ecosystem built on shared liberatory values and practices, such as anti-oppression, anti-capitalism, and anti-colonialism.
Our BIPOC providers actively contribute to this ecosystem by extending care back to our own BIPOC communities, with a focus on uplifting the most marginalized identities. Simultaneously, we are nurturing the future generation of BIPOC clinicians, fostering growth in mental health advocates and activists who will continue the transformative work ahead.
Dr. Ebony Butler, PHD (She/her)
President
Ebony Butler, PhD is a Licensed Psychologist and Food Relationship Strategist who has made it her mission to help women of color heal and thrive in the areas of trauma, including racial trauma and recovering from food and body trauma experienced through diet culture.
Dr. Ebony works alongside women to help them develop skills that increase their relationships with others, themselves, and their bodies.
Aligning with her passion to break through barriers that make it difficult for Black people and other people of color to access quality mental health care, Dr. Ebony created My Therapy Cards®, the first-ever self-exploration card deck for Black women and other women of color.
Since its launch in May 2020, Dr. Ebony has expanded the card deck to include a Teen Edition and Men’s Edition. The expansion of this resource has made self-insight and discovery work more accessible and affordable!
Dr. Lauren Harper, PhD (she/her)
Academic Consultant, Board Member
I am a licensed psychologist who’s practiced therapy for 8 years and recently opened a private practice to work for myself and be more accessible due to the need of more Black therapists. I am driven by my love for understanding human emotion and behavior through cultural experience.
In practice this means I enjoy helping people live their most authentic and liberated lives while honoring how we came to know and understand ourselves and the world through our cultural lens.
I am comfortable discussing racial and gender trauma, social and political concerns that impact your daily functioning, and familial, social or partner relationships that cause distress. In working with me you can expect that I will both challenge and support you through empathy, grace, humor/laughter, and me being my genuine and authentic self.
CéShaun Hankins, LCSW (she/her)
Board Member
CéShaun is enthusiastic about bolstering the crucial work of Mental Health Liberation especially at the particular moment in time in which we find ourselves. She identifies as Black, biracial of Central European descent, a woman, a mother (of human, canine, feline and plant), a partner, an eldest sister, daughter and friend.
CéShaun is also a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over twelve years of experience working in both community-based mental health and private practice settings. Currently, she works in a solo practice with clients in Oregon and California, where she provides somatic (body-connected) therapy and EMDR to Black and Brown individuals managing anxiety, chronic stress and trauma. As a certified yoga teacher and gardener she believes in the importance of integrating movement and land stewardship into how we participate in care work for self and others.
She knowingly straddles the reality of being both a practitioner within the mental health industrial complex along with a dedication to anti-oppressive care. Her personal work of unlearning has offered her opportunities to both lead and support the work of various groups that have centered the decolonization of wellness.
Amanda Huynh, MA in Counseling (She/They)
Operations & Service-User Care
Amanda is a queer, neurodivergent Vietnamese Filipina with an MA in clinical mental health counseling. She uses her personal experience living with depression and chronic illness to approach mental health care with empathy and compassion.
They believe decolonizing therapy and centering social justice in discussions around mental health is one part of the long journey toward a more liberated future.
In her free time, Amanda loves to knit, read, and cuddle with her four cute kitties.
Joyce Kabwe (She/Her)
Creativity & Social Media Specialist
Joyce is a young creator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist (through her non-profit, Dream: Success) that is passionate about serving underrepresented communities.
As an African American woman, she feels a duty to help her people, and all minorities, thrive and obtain the tools they need to reach their fullest potential.
Her long-term goal is to grow her clothing brand, Munia, into a sustainable fashion and lifestyle brand that works with artisans in the Congo, where her family is from, and help create jobs through an ethical, sustainable supply chain.
Dr. Ling Cheun Bianca Lee, PHD, LCPC, Registered Art Therapist (she/they)
Secretary and Board Member
李靈津 Ling Cheun Bianca is a multilingual artist, scholar, advocate, Board-Certified Registered Art Therapist, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor.
Bianca was the past president of the Hong Kong Association of Art Therapists 2017 – 2021. They hold multiple faculty positions at Lewis and Clark College, Antioch University Seattle, and the University of Hong Kong.
Bianca has obtained a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision at Antioch University Seattle. Their dissertation focuses on decentering Eurocentricity in art therapy through a deeper understanding of the transnational application and practice of art therapy.
At MHL, Bianca takes the role of secretary in support of the mission and vision of this organization.
Melody Li, LMFT (they/佢)
Founding Director
Melody Li, LMFT (they/佢) is a mental health justice activist and liberation-oriented psychotherapist. They are proudly queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent, and a Hong Konger at heart.
They founded Inclusive Therapists, a social justice and liberation-oriented mental health directory, resource hub, and community centering people with marginalized identities.
They also founded Mental Health Liberation with the vision to promote equitable mental health care access for BIPOC communities, and to nurture and uplift future generations of racialized mental health care workers.
Their activism focuses on collective liberation and healing. Mel collaborates to extend radicalized and politicized education, mutual-aid, peer and mentor support, and collective care as ways to decolonize the mental health field.
Lanise Lywood, CRPO (She/Her)
Grant Writing & Story Telling
Lanise Lywood is the founder and owner of Melanin Mosaic Therapy. She’s a liberation-oriented psychotherapist, speaker, and writer who is passionate about providing client-centered and culturally responsive care.
In the therapy space, and in community, she is skilled at journeying with others as they navigate through life transitions; whether about careers, grief & loss, personal relationships, values, or identity.
As part of the MHL team Lanise uses her experience to craft compelling funding proposals.
To recharge she likes to spend time in the garden, by the water and/or reading thrillers.
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