• Diverse and inclusive therapy & counseling, including therapists who actively identify themselves.

• Training for clinicians who identify as socially just practitioners.

• Programs that meet community defined needs.

• Service that prioritizes ethical and equitable treatment of marginalized members of society.

What We’re All About…

Culture, Diversity, and Inclusion - Axis Mundi Center for Mental Health is an attempt to answer a call, and to respond to that call with grace, expertise, humility, and determination. It's mission is the product of years of experience (and frustration) in the mental health field, where affordable, culturally competent therapy is as rare as it is needed.

It's an acknowledgement that we live in a time that has defined itself by its struggles with race, culture, power and politics, and wants to contribute to solutions and social development through a different kind of counseling. It's a commitment to our communities, and reflects our drive to not only offer culturally humble therapy, but to turn out culturally humble clinicians.

We opened our doors in October 2016 with a small team of both licensed and pre-licensed clinicians - joined together by our mutual concerns, ethics, and a dedication to trying something new as well as challenging what’s not working anymore, and by our mutual respect for the work we have already done together in the past.

The Fit: We also live by a fundamental commitment to “rightness of fit”. Over and over, research confirms the vital importance of a good fit between therapist and client. That’s our focus and our guide, at all levels of the organization. That means things are a little different over here! For example:

• Our consultations and intakes assess the overall best fit for the client - that might mean the therapist in the consultation, it might mean someone else in the agency, it might mean someone at another organization. We’re dedicated to applying our network of information to ultimate client well-being.

• We also trust that staff are more fit to certain needs and roles than others, and this is something that can change often and over time. AM work culture norms are about role fluidity, creative resource applications, and wise response…not about fixed expectations and identities.

• Culturally, we believe that those who are here now are those who are fits for the times.

Land Acknowledgment:

Our offices, like the rest of the United States, are on stolen land.

It is our responsibility not just to acknowledge this, but to continue the active work of social justice towards movements that . This acknowledgement is also a commitment to ongoing learning, activism, and the amplification of the voices of Native folx.

AM’s central offices are located in unceded Lisjan territory, in what is now known as Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, Emeryville and Albany, and San Francisco, on the unceded territories of Chochenyo and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, primarily. We recognize the historic discrimination and violence inflicted upon Indigenous peoples in California and the Americas, including their forced removal from ancestral lands, and the deliberate and systematic destruction of their communities and culture. We move together towards action that fosters a culture that acknowledges these harms, shows empathy and care, and demonstrates positive steps toward reconciliation and repair.

One action we take is the annual payment of land tax to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an “urban, Indigenous, women-led land trust that facilitates the return of Indigenous lands to Indigenous peoples”. Want to know more? Click here: Give Shuumi

Anti-Racism Commitment:

We acknowledge that the mental health field has historically been a covert system of regulation. It has defined wellness, health, pathology, and criminality in ways that perpetuate racism and inequity, and value particular kinds of healing. We are invested in dismantling this system, and instead investing in a movement toward collective and holistic healing, in which actions furthering systemic change are a necessary part of mental health work.

Our anti-racist and anti-oppressive work is continuous, and we are always striving to learn more, act more, and create more radical structures to support our clients and our community. To this end, we:

• stand unequivocally with and plan to take continued action in support of Black Lives Matter.

• explore creative options for increased accessibility and equity in our therapeutic services

• center inclusive hiring practices

• hold a curious but accountable space for discussions about racial trauma, intergenerational trauma, and/or white supremacy with all our clients

• provide trainings that help clinicians explore their own power, privilege, biases, microaggressions, and the process of unlearning racism