Founded in 1999, just shortly after homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness, Pink Therapy was set up to challenge the pathologisation of LGBTQ+ communities, and the lack of specialist affirming mental healthcare for those of diverse identities and life experience. Over 25 years later, we're still here fighting the cause.
We believe everyone should be able to access high-quality and affirmative mental healthcare, where they are free to bring their whole selves into the therapy room and show up, without fear of judgement, pathologisation and without the additional labour of having to educate the person who's supposed to be there to support them.
Our mission is to improve mental healthcare for LGBTQ+ people and those of Gender, Sex and Relationship Diverse (GSRD) communities.
Did you know that the majority of mental healthcare and therapeutic training does not cover LGBTQ+ or GSRD identities? We're here to provide professional therapists with the knowledge, skills and confidence to work effectively, ethically and affirmatively with LGBTQ+ and GSRD clients. That means supporting therapists throughout their careers with education and training, specialist CPD, developing GSRD-informed standards of best practice, and creating opportunities for allied professionals to share learning.
Specialist therapy can only help when people can find and work with specialist therapists. Through our therapist directory, we have helped thousands of individuals with their mental health journey by connecting them with specialist, affirming practitioners. Our mission to improve access must also be intersectional, considering not just GSRD identities, but also race, class and country.
Acceptance and lived experience are a nice place to start, but when LGBTQ+ and GSRD people routinely face worse mental health outcomes from mainstream therapy services, they're not enough. We push for high standards of care, training, reflective practice and accountability within our profession, believing that by advocating for high standards, we can improve the experiences of mental health within our communities.
We won't let imperfect get in the way of progress.
We will speak up, challenge and advocate for better mental healthcare for our communities, but recognise that progress and change rarely arrives perfectly formed, that progress is iterative. That doesn't mean being careless, but it does mean taking steps forward, even if they're imperfect. When we get something wrong, we commit to being open and listening, we want to hear about it. We will always reflect, repair when necessary, learn and keep moving forward for progress for all. We don't expect perfection from ourselves, our therapists or our communities, but we will always advocate for better.
Our focus is LGBTQ+ and GSRD mental health.
We understand that LGBTQ+ and GSRD identities do not exist in a vacuum, and that mental health is a nuanced, individual and layered experience, often where the intersections of our identities show most starkly. We are committed to intersectionality, but also to cultural humility. We are the experts on LGBTQ+ and GSRD mental health, and even here we still have plenty to learn. Where others have greater expertise and knowledge, we will defer to their expertise, listen and follow closely in allyship with the communities, experts and organisations who know best. Our expertise is GSRD mental health, but our solidarity extends much further, and while we have led on many things, we are humble enough to follow.
With a brick, you can build a bridge or a wall, and we choose to build bridges.
Challenging the establishment and norms has been part of our DNA from day one, and is still part of our daily work. We will always, unapologetically, advocate for LGBTQ+ and GSRD people, challenging practices and powers which harm and disadvantage our communities, and push for better. However, as an organisation, we are rooted in therapeutic values and practice, and so we must engage in challenge and the process of change as befitting of professional therapists. We want to be curious and collaborative rather than contemptuous or rejecting, believing that critique and challenge should, and can be, compassionate. We are willing to engage in difficult conversations, not just to win an argument, but to affect real change that will help our communities. Being brave and bold should never mean bullying. Being a challenger should never require us to lose our humanity, compassion or core therapeutic principles.
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