As we reflect during Black History Month, our team at VOX would like to make some acknowledgements about the Eurocentric and Oppressive history of Therapy and Mental Health Interventions in Canada.

1) We recognize and acknowledge that ‘therapy’ is inherently Eurocentric; and that most clinicians have been trained from a colonial lens and pedagogy. 

We stand against this lens & view of practice, and are committed to embodying a humble posture of interrogating and unlearning internalized colonial practices. We are an anti-oppressive, anti-racists, non-pathologizing, structural team of social workers.

2) We recognize and acknowledge that the history of ‘mental health interventions’ in Canada has been oppressive; and lives on through systemic and institutional violence. 

We stand against systemic and institutional violence and recognize the impact of racism, enslavement and oppression on individuals, families, and their ancestors. We recognize that internalized oppression as well as overt forms of oppression are an ongoing violence, and we join in the fight to see those systems dismantled. 

3) We acknowledge that the history of therapy provides the therapist with access to forms of power and privilege that reinforce colonial practices. 

We stand against Racism, White Supremacy, Neoliberal Ideologies, Oppression and Queerphobia and are committed to interrogating our privilege, and join in the fight for agency and self-sovereignty. 

We recognize that members of our team physically represent groups of violence and eagerly defer to Social Workers on our team and in the community who are Black or Person’s of Colour; so that our presence does not hinder healing or reinforce race-based stress injuries, as well as continued colonial violence. 

We maintain a posture of self-interrogation, and a chronic suspicion of our own location and biases, while acknowledging our professions collusion with systemic racism. 

VOX Mental Health stands against anti-Black racism. We believe that Black Lives Matter. 

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