Mental Health

I'm reminded of the scene in Office Space where Peter goes to his therapist to "transfer" his negative energy, and the therapist has a heart attack on the spot.

This, except all the fires are going on outside the windows of the therapist’s office, to the horizon, as far as the eye can see.

Good therapy should hand you the bottle and tell you not to dump it on all at once but to start dripping it on and check in for refills with the refill being a bit larger each time.

You’re absolutely right—therapy often feels like putting a drop of water on a raging fire. As mental health professionals and advocates, we find ourselves treating individual symptoms while the systemic causes of suffering—economic exploitation, discrimination, state violence—continue unchecked. But what if therapy itself could be reimagined as a tool of collective resistance and liberation rather than just individual adaptation?

The Limits of Individual Therapy in a Dying System

Traditional therapy, rooted in Western individualism, focuses on personal pathology rather than the oppressive structures that create distress in the first place. It helps people survive, but rarely challenges the conditions that make survival so difficult. As fascistic policies escalate—targeting marginalized communities, undermining democracy, and deepening economic inequality—our role cannot simply be to help people “cope” with injustice. Coping is not enough.

Therapy should not just help individuals endure oppressive systems; it should equip them to dismantle and replace those systems. We need a revolution in mental health—one that shifts from isolated, clinical solutions to community-based, justice-oriented healing.

A New Vision: Therapy as Collective Resistance

1. Worker Cooperative Mental Health Practices – Breaking away from profit-driven therapy models and creating mental health collectives that serve communities rather than corporations or insurance companies.

2. Radical Group Therapy & Mutual Aid – Encouraging healing circles, community networks, and activist spaces that treat mental health as a shared struggle, not an isolated condition.

3. Politicizing Therapy – Acknowledging that capitalism, racism, and state oppression are core mental health issues and helping people engage in direct action as a form of healing.

4. Revolutionary Care Networks – Moving beyond institutions and creating autonomous, grassroots mental health support systems that are independent of the state and its oppressive mechanisms.

Collective Action is Therapy

The mental health crisis is not just personal; it is structural. And the only real cure is collective liberation. Healing doesn’t happen in isolation—it happens in the streets, in mutual aid networks, in resistance movements. Therapy must evolve to be part of that fight, not just a salve for its wounds.

We don’t just need better mental healthcare. We need a revolution in how we understand and practice healing.

At least it helps, even if only a tiny bit, when nothing else does!

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