About the Series
This event is part of an ongoing talk series inspired by IDHA’s Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum. It features members of our teaching faculty team and dives into timely topics that intersect with our transformative mental health lens. A first panel in September 2023 explored how to bridge the gap between the reality of mental health services and a world in which people’s autonomy and self-determination are truly centered. Learn more about the curriculum and enroll here.
About the Event
In this time of prolonged crisis and violence, many mental health providers are experiencing challenges in providing meaningful care to those they seek to support, as well as sustaining their own practice. Dominant mental health approaches encourage disconnection from body, mind, spirit, and our world, which greatly hinders a provider’s ability to show up authentically and effectively. Many people enter the field with a desire to help, but aren't given tools to navigate the trauma of systemic oppression and violence – which often leads to more harm.
IDHA’s transformative mental health lens provides a roadmap to help meet this moment. It recognizes the inherent connections between our personal and collective transformation, uplifting care modalities that foster connection and name the root causes of trauma and distress. Transformative mental health situates providers within a wider ecosystem of change and liberation, calling upon them to join wider movements for equity and justice.
Join IDHA on Tuesday, February 20 to hear from a panel of activists, survivors, and providers about how they practice a transformative approach to mental health that honors our unique histories and inherent interconnectedness. Centering a multiplicity of roles and relationships to mental health, panelists will share how they have fostered self-awareness and sustainability by analyzing power in their lives and work. This event intends to ground us in the notion that mental health is political, and the role providers can play in co-creating a more liberatory and equitable future with their clients.
This event is open to mental health workers and clinicians, researchers, educators, activists, survivors, peers, current and prior service users, writers, artists, and other advocates – anyone who is interested in exploring the link between personal and societal transformation.
Register in advance via Eventbrite to join. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about how to join.
Donations
IDHA is a small organization that strives to meet the accessibility needs of our community to the best of our ability. Our events are by tiered suggested donation to ensure we can provide closed captions on our events and other programs, though we strive to never turn anyone away. We appreciate donations of any size for those who have capacity to give.
Access
ASL interpretation + automated closed captioning will be provided. The event will be recorded and shared with all registrants. Please submit any additional access needs to contact@idha-nyc.org.
Panelists
Anjali Nath Upadhyay
Anjali Nath Upadhyay M.A.² (she/they) founded the grassroots adult education program Liberation Spring and hosts the decolonial feminist podcast Feral Visions. She earned an MA degree in Political Science & a Graduate Certificate in International Cultural Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. From 2010-2014, she was a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu. She holds an MA degree in Women’s Studies from SDSU. She double-majored in Women’s Studies and Political Science with a minor in Philosophy at CSU Fullerton. Upon invitation, she has presented her original research at dozens of universities, in addition to professional associations, radio shows, and community events. She has organized for prison abolition, graduate student collective bargaining, & more. She’s currently working on a manuscript titled Pulling Weeds & Planting Seeds: Wayfinding towards Collective Liberation and building the Weeds & Seeds app.
Evan Auguste
Evan Auguste, PhD (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His identities as a Haitian-African American man have informed his work on examining how the U.S.’s history of anti-Blackness has shaped psychological realities both in and outside of the country’s borders. His work focuses broadly on addressing the mental health consequences of structural anti-Blackness through the lens of Black liberation psychology. To date his research has primarily examined these experiences among recent Haitian migrants to the United States as well as justice-involved Black boys. He also focuses on developing and piloting anti-carceral and community-based health interventions, such as the Association of Black Psychologists’ Sawubona Healing Circles, which he co-developed, to promote healing from an African-centered framework.
Oumou Sylla
oumou is a multi-hyphenate polycreative - therapist, coach/wellness doula, entrepreneur, disruptor, writer, speaker, consultant and facilitator of spaces for radical learning. she is the creator of RMHFA, a workshop that is slowly but surely changing the care and mental health landscape. oumou’s lived and professional experiences are gifts that allow her to support people and businesses in intuitive and radical ways. their work aims to disrupt systems of disconnection, the laziness lie, the productivity death escalator and “the transactional ways in which relationships exist under capitalism” (word 2 niki franco).
Mayowa Obasaju
Mayowa Obasaju, PhD (she/her) is a Black, Nigerian born, American raised clinical and community, trauma and healing focused, womanist and liberation psychologist, trainer, and educator. Mayowa brings over 12 years of clinical, organizing, teaching, and training experience centering the intersectional and complex experiences of Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. In her teaching, training, organizing and private practice spaces, she works at the nexus of trauma and healing, self-in-community care practices, systemic and intersectional analysis, critical consciousness development, and anti-oppressive and liberatory practice. She believes that deepening authentic connection to self, spirit, community and land is healing. She is a mother, partner, sister, daughter and a lover of tattoos, reading, and dancing.
Moderator
Noah Gokul
Noah Gokul (they/them) is the Program Coordinator for the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA). They are a Queer multidisciplinary artist and educator here to create liberated worlds through art, storytelling, and sound. They grew up in Oakland, CA/unceded Ohlone land, and identify as a trauma survivor with sensitivities to the world around them. They use music and art for meaning-making and the healing of others, integrating these passions into their work as a peer for young adults in a first-episode psychosis program. They have facilitated in a wide variety of settings, at the intersections of anti-oppression, trauma, incarceration, Caribbean ancestry, music, and mental health. Through their incantations they create spaces of radical imagination and possibility.