How do we build structures of support that nourish us, while also working to transform oppressive systems?
In a world that often insists on urgency and control, how do we practice care that is relational, adaptive, and alive to complexity?
Series Overview
IDHA’s 2025 training series, Tending the Future of Care: Practices & Possibilities for Transformative Mental Health, is for those interested in reshaping and reimagining what mental health care can look like at the edge of collapse – and committed to creating a more liberatory future together. Whether you're working in clinical spaces, organizing communities, supporting loved ones, or navigating your own lived experience, this space offers grounding, practical tools, and the chance to connect with others committed to challenging the status quo.
The landscape of care is under strain – and many of us are feeling the weight of it. Amid the erosion of public health infrastructure, the expansion of carceral mental health practices, and the stress of our sociopolitical conditions, those on the frontlines of care are stretched thin, facing burnout with few places to turn for support. The role of mental health professionals is increasingly contested – caught between systems of harm and aspirations for healing. Dominant models offer few answers, often reducing suffering to symptoms and prescribing narrow solutions to the layered realities people are living through.
This series offers frameworks, strategies, and practices to help you deepen your capacity – not just to navigate the crises of our time, but to support others in ways that are both personally sustaining and collectively transformative. Grounded in lessons from history, our faculty will draw on the wisdom of those who have worked to transform mental health care, both within and beyond systems. Rather than seeking certainty or closure, we will strengthen our ability to stay with the unknown and cultivate healing approaches that are values-aligned and responsive.
Classes will be participatory and collaborative, rooted in the belief that no single expert holds the answers – we hold them together. We’ll build on the knowledge in the room, weaving insights from a range of disciplines, movements, and lived experiences. This five-part series is a space to replenish, reconnect, and remember that another way of providing care is not only possible – it’s already in motion.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
Why mental health must be understood through a systemic and historical lens, and how systems of oppression are actively shaping today’s landscape
How carceral logics operate in clinical, community, and institutional care settings, and what alternative frameworks are emerging
How mainstream, dominant narratives (like “nervous system dysregulation” and “access to care”) shape mental health practice, and how to engage them with nuance
How dialogic models dismantle psychiatric authority, redistribute power, and generate possibilities for real healing
SKILLS YOU’LL GAIN
Holding your role (as provider, advocate, or community member) with greater clarity, intention, and integrity
Staying grounded in personal values while navigating exhaustion and uncertainty
Assessing when and how to disrupt dominant models – and what alternatives to offer
Working with crisis and contradiction without defaulting to control
Schedule
Registration includes the 2.5-hour class session and access to IDHA’s School for Transformative Mental Health on Mighty Networks. This is our virtual learning community where you’ll have the opportunity to engage with other students and your faculty.
Recording: Please note that all main sessions will be recorded and shared with registrants, in case you aren’t able to show up live.
Accessibility: ASL translation and automated closed captioning will be provided.
Date and Time |
Course Title and Faculty |
|
|---|---|---|
| Sunday, June 22, 2025 12-2:30 pm EST |
In All Things a Wisdom: Complexity Theory & Practice for Liberatory Mental Health
Zena Sharman and Kai Cheng Thom | ENROLL |
| Sunday, July 13, 2025 12-2:30 pm EST |
Between Resistance & Complicity: The Role of Providers in Transforming Care
Vivianne Guevara and Hel Spandler | ENROLL |
| Sunday, August 3, 2025 12-2:30 pm EST |
Grappling with the Biomedical Model: The Case for a Paradigm Shift
Rupi Legha and Robert Whitaker | ENROLL |
| Sunday, August 24, 2025 12-2:30 pm EST |
The Politics of Regulation: Knocking the Nervous System Off Its Pedestal
Rae Johnson and Nkem Ndefo | ENROLL |
| Sunday, September 14, 2025 12-2:30 pm EST |
What Emerges in Dialogue: Relational Practice & the Ethics of Uncertainty
Charmaine Harris and Russell Razzaque | ENROLL |
“I appreciate the willingness to grow together in the space — the recognition that we all come with lives rich with experience, and we are capable of co-building the future as far away as possible from state and interpersonal violence, towards collective and community care.”
— PAST IDHA training participant
In All Things a Wisdom:
Complexity Theory & Practice for Liberatory Mental Health
Sunday, June 22, 2025 • 12-2:30 pm EST
2.25 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
Many dominant culture approaches to mental health today emphasize the medical model and reductive understandings of ‘non-normative’ human experiences as symptom clusters, distorted cognitions, dysregulated nervous systems, and other constructs that imply brokenness and dysfunction. Absent from these perspectives is the recognition that within the apparent chaos of mental distress, there are often deep forms of wisdom that reflect the complexity of the times we live in – wisdom that can be accessed and understood if we are prepared to receive it.
This class will offer frameworks and tools to support holding, making sense of, and honouring the innate intelligence of complexity within ourselves, others, and the broader systems we are seeking to transform. Participants will also be introduced to embodied skills that can be used to strengthen their capacity to “meet” complexity with equanimity, curiosity, and compassion.
Learning objectives:
Understand, describe and discuss key frameworks for making sense of complexity
Apply these frameworks to understanding and working with complexity within ourselves, others, and the systems we are seeking to transform
Use complexity frameworks to effectively move away from pathologizing and power-over approaches to mental health practice and towards approaches that support collaboration and liberation
Practice embodied skills for cultivating equanimity and reducing overwhelm in complex contexts
Zena Sharman, PhD, is a writer and consultant whose body of work pivots around the questions “How do we create change?” and “How do we care for each other?” She’s the author of four books, including The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health (2021) and the Lambda Literary award-winning anthology The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care (2016). Her memoir, Staying Power: On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose, is forthcoming from Arsenal Pulp Press in October 2025. She’s an engaging speaker who regularly gives virtual and in-person talks and workshops to audiences across North America. You can learn more about Zena and her work at https://zenasharman.com/
Kai Cheng Thom, MSW, MSc, Qualified Mediator, and Certified Professional Coach is an author, performer, and noted expert in the fields of trauma healing, professional coaching, somatics, dialogue facilitation, and conflict transformation. As a theorist and practitioner, she has made significant contributions in the area of trauma-informed, social change-oriented approaches to pursuing individual and collective healing and transformation, particularly in her work on Transformative Justice and conflict resolution in activist communities.
Between Resistance & Complicity:
The Role of Providers in Transforming Care
Sunday, July 13, 2025 • 12-2:30 pm EST
2.25 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
For generations, providers have challenged the harms of the mental health system and reimagined what care could be. From Frantz Fanon’s revolutionary critique of colonial psychiatry in Algeria to Franco Basaglia’s abolition of Italy’s asylum system and the radical therapeutic communities that emerged across Europe and the U.S., radical figures have offered bold visions that transcend dominant models. These lineages remind us that providers have long been both agents of control and potential catalysts for change. Today, as more mental health providers are called to reckon with their roles within systems of oppression, these histories offer vital lessons about what it means to resist, transform, and build anew.
This class will explore provider efforts to shift practice and consciousness both within and beyond the mental health system. Faculty will examine historical movements such as democratic psychiatry and contemporary efforts to bridge social work with abolition, while highlighting the role of publications like Asylum magazine in fostering democratic knowledge-making and collective critique. Through personal storytelling, and drawing from restorative justice frameworks, we’ll explore how providers can navigate the tensions between complicity and resistance. Participants will be invited to consider what it means to hold liberatory commitments while working within institutional settings, and how to center lived experience in the pursuit of transformative mental health care.
Learning objectives:
Identify key figures and movements that have advanced liberatory approaches to mental health, including efforts toward deinstitutionalization
Examine how providers have functioned both as agents of control and catalysts for change, and the implications of this dual role
Assess the role of survivor-led media and collective platforms, such as Asylum magazine, in reshaping mental health narratives and power dynamics
Apply restorative and transformative justice principles to contemporary mental health practice, with attention to accountability and repair
Explore strategies for aligning professional practice with liberatory values
Vivianne Guevera has been a restorative justice practitioner and facilitator 10 years and a social worker and mitigation specialist in public defense for over 17 years. Vivianne comes from a family of farmworkers, faith workers, and social justice workers. She strives to honor their legacy and that of her ancestors through a life of service. Vivianne continues to learn through teaching others and by providing opportunities that promote community and healing.
Hel Spandler (they/them) is Professor of mental health politics at the University of Lancashire, UK; Editor of Asylum, the magazine for democratic psychiatry; one of the lead editors of the International journal of Mad Studies and Principal Investigator of the madzines project.
Grappling with the Biomedical Model:
The Case for a Paradigm Shift
Sunday, August 3, 2025 • 12-2:30 pm EST
2.25 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
In this critical moment of institutional collapse and political attack, there is a growing need to grapple with the biomedical model’s dominance in mental health care – and its function as a smokescreen covering up its historical roots in slavery, its use as an instrument of colonization, and its reinforcement of white supremacy. Related concepts in mental health equity work e.g. cultural humility, structural competency, and the “access to care” narrative) promise progress but often fail to reckon with the deep-rooted histories of systemic oppression, surveillance, and carcerality embedded within the field. As public institutions like SAMHSA and NIMH are dismantled, we are invited to move beyond existing frameworks and reimagine care humanity, relationality, and political consciousness.
Through personal narrative, historical analysis, and visionary practice, this class offers an opportunity to critically examine the biomedical model and raise fundamental questions about the path forward at a time of crossroads for the mental health field. Faculty will present research demonstrating the model’s long-standing failure to improve outcomes, and highlight ongoing efforts to abolish coercive mental health practices such as psychiatric restraints, challenge the carceral logics embedded in mental health systems, establish anti-racist clinical standards, and critically interrogate mandated reporting. Participants will be invited to examine how these shifts support a departure from medicalized models and deepen their own commitment to building ethical, justice-aligned forms of care.
Learning objectives:
Critically analyze the biomedical model as a political and historical construct rather than a neutral framework for care
Identify how mainstream mental health narratives like “access to care,” “cultural humility,” “structural competency,” and “global mental health” can obscure histories of systemic violence
Reflect on the relationship between mental health systems and the carceral state, including the use of restraints, mandated reporting, and involuntary treatment
Explore possibilities for creating new care practices grounded in autonomy, dignity, and self-determination
Practice unlearning professional socialization that perpetuates systemic harm in order to support anti-racist, non-carceral clinical practice
Rupi Legha, MD is a psychiatrist, independent scholar, and founder of the Antiracism in Mental Health Fellowship. She brings both heart and rigor to her work, taking her role as Dr. Legha seriously while staying deeply connected to who she is as Rupi. A graduate of Harvard Medical School and double board-certified in child, adolescent, and adult psychiatry, her work reimagines mental healthcare through a lens of humanity, justice, and collective liberation across generations.
Robert Whitaker is the author of five books, three of which tell of the history of psychiatry. In 2010, his Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness won the U.S. Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for best investigative journalism. He is the founder of madinamerica.com, a website that features research news and blogs by an international group of writers interested in “rethinking psychiatry.”
The Politics of Regulation:
Knocking the Nervous System Off Its Pedestal
Sunday, August 24, 2025 • 12-2:30 pm EST
2.25 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
In dominant mental health and wellness frameworks, nervous system regulation is often framed as a primarily individual pursuit – a matter of managing stress, emotions, and behaviors in isolation from broader social, ecological, and historical contexts. Yet human experience is shaped not only by our nervous systems but also by the environments we inhabit, the structures we navigate, and the collective traumas we carry. What becomes possible when we move beyond narrow self-regulation paradigms and instead center relational, systemic, and liberatory perspectives?
This class centers a critical examination of dominant narratives around nervous system regulation, questioning how these frameworks often obscure the relational, ecological, and political dimensions of human experience. We invite participants to reexamine nervous system regulation through the lens of somatic bandwidth – a dynamic range of sensory and emotional capacity that is continually shaped by internal states, relational environments, and structural conditions. Participants will engage in practices to map their own somatic bandwidth – not solely for self-optimization, but to expand our collective capacity to feel, act, and connect. We will examine how conflating discomfort with lack of safety can narrow somatic bandwidth, and how cultivating discernment between the two is essential for personal and collective healing. By interrogating the pervasive expectation that individuals alone are responsible for resolving dysregulation, we re-imagine what shared responsibility might look and feel like in liberatory practice.
Learning objectives:
Critically evaluate current concepts of nervous system regulation through an ecological, liberatory framework
Explore the concept of somatic bandwidth through mapping sensory and emotional capacity
Appreciate the importance of discernment between discomfort and lack of safety to the development of somatic bandwidth
Reevaluate the mandate on individual responsibility for resolving activation and dysregulation
Rae Johnson, PhD, RSW, RSMT, BCC (they/them) is a scholar/activist researching and practicing at the intersections of embodiment and social justice. A professor of somatic psychology for over two decades, Rae works with thought leaders, practitioners, and community change agents around the world to help shape the emerging field of embodied social justice. Rae is the author of several books, including Embodied Social Justice (Routledge, 2018) and Embodied Activism (North Atlantic Books, 2023).
Nkem Ndefo is the founder of Lumos Transforms and creator of The Resilience Toolkit, a model that fosters embodied self-awareness, supports stabilization from the impacts of personal and collective trauma, and nurtures adaptive capacity in the face of stress—all within an ecologically sensitive and social justice-oriented framework. She brings extensive experience as a clinician, educator, researcher, and community strategist to innovative programs that address trauma and inequity, build resilience, and catalyze liberatory change for individuals and organizations across the U.S. and globally. Nkem is especially committed to working in solidarity with people most impacted by violence and marginalization.
What Emerges in Dialogue:
Relational Practice & the Ethics of Uncertainty
Sunday, September 14, 2025 • 12-2:30 pm EST
2.25 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
In a society that often privileges individualism over interdependence, dialogic approaches offer a powerful reminder that healing happens in relationship. These models challenge dominant mental health paradigms that rely on fixed hierarchies of expertise, instead inviting practices rooted in collaboration and curiosity. While the mental health system often operates on logics of certainty and control – especially in times of crisis – dialogic approaches ask us to embrace uncertainty, honor multiple truths, and reclaim personal narratives as a path to meaning-making.
This class will explore the power of dialogic practice, offering a practical look at how these models support healing and connection. Bridging both lived and professional experience with these frameworks, faculty will emphasize how dialogic spaces come alive when every voice in the room is heard – especially those too often silenced. They will share insights from the ODDESSI trial (the largest randomized controlled trial of Open Dialogue to date, currently underway in London) offering a look at what the latest research reveals and how the model is evolving. Participants will be invited to reflect on their own roles in care relationships and consider what it takes to release the impulse to control and move into connection.
Learning objectives:
Understand the core principles of Open Dialogue, including polyphony and embracing uncertainty
Distinguish dialogic practice from traditional models of care, and explore how “not-knowing” can support meaningful transformation
Reframe crisis as a potential site of growth and change when held with the right relational supports
Examine the impact of centering lived experience in dialogic spaces – and what shifts when every voice is valued
Reflect on how professional and cultural conditioning shapes our relationships to expertise, control, and authority
Charmaine Harris is passionate about relationships and driven by curiosity, with a strong belief in the power of community, dialogue, living narratives and relational practices. She supports individuals and teams in creating spaces for authentic connection, shared understanding, and collaborative healing. She is committed to fostering compassionate, person-centered approaches in mental health care.
Prof. Russell Razzaque is a Consultant Psychiatrist, Associate Medical Director, Clinical Director for Mental Health Transformation and Director of Research & Development at North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT). He is also a mindfulness teacher and the Royal College of Psychiatrists Presidential lead for Compassionate and Relational care. Additionally, he is the Clinical & Strategic Director for the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health. Russell’s primary teaching and research interests are mindfulness, therapeutic relationships and holistic models of care. He has published a range of papers in peer reviewed journals, written several books, implemented pilot teams in a range of NHS Trusts and he is currently clinical lead for a large NIHR funded, multi-centre randomised controlled trial, studying the implementation of a systemic, person-centred and holistic approach to mental healthcare in the NHS, known as Open Dialogue.
“Interesting contrast of facilitation in terms of a more academic vs. on-the-ground perspective that complemented each other really well. I liked the way facilitators shared space with one another. The topics were right up my alley and so relevant to my lived experience and current struggles in life and in community. I adored chatting with classmates too and sharing vulnerability."
— Past IDHA training participant
Pricing Tiers
What you get: |
Reduced/Member $30/ class |
General $60/ class |
Supporter $85/ class |
| 2.5-hour live class session | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Class recording and resource list | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Access to IDHA's virtual learning community on Mighty Networks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Complementary CE credits (2.25 per class) | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Subsidize another participant and sustain IDHA's ongoing training program | ✓ |
We love organizing these classes and we’re committed to keeping them as accessible as possible. At the same time, there’s a lot that goes into making them happen. As we navigate a shifting and uncertain funding landscape and move toward becoming more community-sustained, we’ve made a small increase to our live series registration fees this year. Your registration helps cover the cost of compensating our faculty, providing live ASL interpretation and accurate captioning, and maintaining the tech platforms that keep classes running smoothly.
Bundle Pricing
Save 30% when you purchase all FIVE courses in the series!
|
Reduced/Member $150 $105/ 5 classes |
General $300 $210/ 5 classes |
Supporter $425 $297/ 5 classes |
Scholarships
If cost is a barrier, we don’t want that to be the reason you can’t join us. We are also offering full and partial scholarships to the entire series. Our Scholarship Program is for mental health providers, peers, current and prior users of mental health services, and/or activists and advocates who are passionate about transformative mental health practices. POC, LGBTQI, transgender, low-income, disabled persons, and other marginalized groups will be given priority.
Deadline to apply: June 13
Continuing Education Credits
As a training institute that values lived experience as highly as professional training, IDHA recognizes the way that the credentialing system enforces a culture of professionalism and devalues lived experience. At the same time, we believe it is a radical act to offer our training content for CE credits, ensuring that mental health workers and other clinicians can apply transformative mental health knowledge in maintaining a credential.
For this 2025 series, all five sessions are eligible for CE credits. CE credits are available to available to Psychologists, Social Workers, Counselors, and Therapists.
IDHA offers these CE credits (2.25 credits per class, or 11.25 for the full series) at the General and Supporter Rate only, for no additional cost. Certificates are made available after the class is over.
FAQ
What’s unique about IDHA’s approach?
We value lived experience as highly as professional training, so each course will be led by both a mental health clinician as well as someone who identifies as a survivor, a mental health service user, and/or someone who has experienced a mental health crisis. This will ensure participants receive holistic and nuanced perspectives.
Who is this series for?
This course is for mental health professionals, including but not limited to: clinicians, such as psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers, peer specialists, recovery support specialists, housing specialists, nurse practitioners and medical professionals, students. and anyone who works or plans to work with and around people who experience mental health-related issues.
Where are the classes held?
Classes will be held virtually via Zoom. Be sure to download the Zoom software onto your computer in advance of the training!
Are scholarships available?
IDHA will award a set of full and partial scholarship positions to mental health providers, peers, current and prior users of mental health services, and/or activists and advocates who are passionate about transformative mental health practices. POC, LGBTQI, transgender, low-income, disabled persons, and other marginalized groups will be given priority. Learn more about our Scholarship Program here (applications due June 13).
Are these classes accessible?
Live ASL translation and automated closed captioning will be provided for all eight class sessions.
Do I have to show up right at the time advertised for the class?
Yes, this is a live training so please be sure you are available at that time. All sessions will be recorded and shared with registrants after. Please note that all sessions begin at 12 pm EST.
Will I have the opportunity to interact with faculty?
Yes, each live training will provide the opportunity to interact with the faculty. You can also interact with many faculty members on Mighty Networks.
What is your cancellation policy?
For any questions or concerns, please email us at contact@idha-nyc.org.
There is no conflict of interest or commercial support for this program.