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Therapists can’t fix what we refuse to name, because mental health isn’t just personal—it’s political, historical, and deeply human.

What if therapy isn’t the neutral space we were taught to believe it is? What if the very act of naming, diagnosing, or treating someone already lives inside a political story, one written long before they ever entered the room?

I think of a client, a single mother of two, who came to therapy saying she couldn’t “get it together.” She described feeling broken, lazy, and unmotivated. In truth, she was working multiple jobs, barely sleeping at night, and still couldn’t afford childcare. Her nervous system wasn’t defective—it was doing its best to survive conditions that were never humane to begin with.

Every session unfolds inside systems that shape who gets care, how suffering is defined, and whose pain is taken seriously.

To talk about healing without talking about power is to miss the heart of it.

What Is Mental Health, and Who Gets to Define “Mental Illness”?

Every therapist works within a political system, whether we admit it or not. Healing doesn’t happen in isolation; it unfolds inside systems shaped by power, access, and history.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the primary reference guide for mental health professionals in the United States. It offers consistency in diagnoses and treatment planning, a necessary structure in many ways.

But here’s the truth: the DSM was built through a narrow lens, reflecting the research and worldview of white men. Many of its categories fail to account for the systemic and political roots of what we so casually call “mental illness.”

Mental health does not exist in a vacuum. Systemic issues like poverty, community violence, sexual harassment, lack of family leave, unequal access to healthcare, work-life imbalance, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia shape our clients’ lived realities every single day.

The language we use in therapy matters. Labeling someone with a “disorder” or “dysfunction” instead of approaching them through a humanistic, strengths-based lens is political. So is positioning ourselves as therapists as the “expert,” rather than co-creating a space of respect, collaboration, and healing.

Therapy has always been political.

It was born within power structures that privileged neutrality and detachment. But neutrality can be harmful. When we pretend to be “above” politics, we individualize pain that is often collective and systemic.

Everything Is Connected

If I ever need a reminder that politics and mental health are intertwined, I look no further than the client sitting in front of me.

Many clients experience what I call political anxiety: obsessive thinking, intrusive fears, agitation, and sleeplessness rooted in polarization, uncertainty, and media-driven fear. These aren’t just individual symptoms; they reflect a nervous system under siege by forces much larger than one person’s psyche.

To support clients fully, we have to recognize how personal struggles are entangled with social and political realities. No one should leave therapy feeling like they are the only one struggling.

We are all moving through the same storm, just in different boats.

And healing requires more than insight; it requires awareness of history and power. Mental health isn’t only about individual well-being, it’s also about access, safety, belonging, and the conditions we live in.

The mental health field itself has a complicated history. It has been complicit in the pathologizing and criminalizing of marginalized communities. To “do no harm,” we must reckon with that past. We must affirm our clients’ identities and, when possible, use our voices to shift the systems that harm them.

Therapists Are in the Political Arena, Too

Therapy is political for therapists as well. Just like during the pandemic, I am in the storm too, affected by the same systems, even if in different ways.

Politics show up in who pays us, how and where we were educated, what systems we work within, and who has access to our care.

I am grateful to have trained in a social-justice-oriented graduate program that challenged me to think critically. Courses like “Power, Privilege & Oppression” and “Feminist Theories and Therapies” taught me to see that the personal is, and always has been, political. These frameworks continue to guide how I understand trauma, healing, and collective liberation.

Mental health doesn’t begin and end in the therapy room. It lives in the ecosystems around us, from our homes and workplaces to our schools, our neighborhoods, and even our voting booths.

Redefining the Role of “The Therapist”

Most of us enter this profession because we care—sometimes too much. We want people to live more fulfilling, authentic lives. But if we truly care about that, we must also care about justice, equity, and the conditions that allow people to thrive.

Therapists aren’t here to explain the world to clients. We’re here to help them navigate it, and when necessary, to help transform it.

Your politics and mine don’t need to align perfectly. But morality and humanity matter.

To ignore politics in therapy is to ignore a fundamental part of someone’s reality. It’s dismissive. It’s invalidating. But when therapy makes room for the full truth of a person’s life, including the systems shaping it, real empowerment and transformation become possible.

As a therapist, I help clients build awareness of their inner world, navigate emotional pain, and understand the dynamics of power and control in their lives. Therapy is where we meet ourselves with honesty, humility, and compassion.

Healing is personal work inside a collective wound, and tending that wound is both intimate and revolutionary.

When that single mother I mentioned earlier finally said, “I thought something was wrong with me,” and I reflected to her, “There’s nothing wrong with you; something’s wrong with the system,” her shoulders softened for the first time.

That moment, that breath of truth, was deeply healing therapy for her soul.

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