Our Vision
PsiAN strives for a world in which psychotherapies that create lasting change are universally available to those in need.
Our Mission
PsiAN advocates for awareness, policies and access to psychotherapies that create lasting change.
Our Values
People First
We believe in recognizing individuals and their unique sociocultural contexts, experiences, and needs.
Integrity
We speak and act with purpose, passion, consistency and commitment.
Collaboration
We embrace a diversity of perspectives, backgrounds, disciplines, and work across boundaries with mutual respect.
Independence
We make the best decisions we can based on thoughtful consideration of the best evidence.
Compassion
We approach each other and our work with compassion, respect and dignity.
Anti-Oppression
We stand against all forms of hate, discrimination, and bias.
Our Core Principles
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapies of depth, insight and relationship are, incontrovertibly, evidence-based best practices.
Relationships heal relationships. The quality of a therapeutic relationship is the most significant determinant of treatment success.
The clinician is in the best position to assess the most appropriate and effective course and length of treatment. True and lasting treatment takes time, effort and care.
Ongoing treatment relationships must be respected, protected and supported by third party payers. Humane and effective treatment makes good economic sense.
Confidentiality and clients’ rights must be protected, as they allow for individuals’ trust in the therapeutic process and in the profession of psychotherapy.
One size does not fit all. Therapies of depth, insight and relationship are unique and personal.
Emotional distress is not a disease.
Policy
Educational policies and funding for research and clinician training must respect and support relational, depth, insight-oriented and humanistic practices.
Effective mental health policy must include early intervention to prevent later problems in school, work, social and family life, and to break intergenerational cycles of distress.
Effective and comprehensive mental health treatment must include amelioration of socioeconomic factors that adversely affect mental health including, but not limited to, poverty, homelessness, prejudice, violence and discrimination.
Standards of Care
The Psychotherapy Action Network endorses the generally accepted Standards of Care outlined in the decision in the Wit v UBH class action lawsuit.
Psychotherapy must not be limited to superficial symptom relief, and must treat chronic, as well as acute, distress.
Equity
The deep inequities in access to therapies of depth, insight and relationship due to systemic racism and other forms of prejudice must be directly addressed, recognized as fundamentally unjust, and eliminated.
It is crucial for therapy to embrace understanding and respect for the multiple, complex, intersecting and evolving variables and contexts that inform development, experience and identity. These variables include, but are not limited to, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, religion.
Sensitivity to the impacts of systemic oppression, intergenerational trauma and individual traumatic experience, as well as to the enriching impacts of sociocultural context, is intrinsic to therapies of depth, insight and relationship.
Individuals’ rights to self-determination must be respected; treatment must be non-coercive and collaborative.
Inequities in access to clinical training in the practice of therapies of depth, insight and relationship must be remediated.
Incarcerated individuals must have access to humane, individualized and intensive mental health services. Too often those who most need treatment are the least likely to be able to access it.
Our History
The Psychotherapy Action Network grew from the energy generated by a conference sponsored by the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis that took place in Chicago in 2017. That conference, “Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Rehumanizing Mental Health in Policy and Practice,” focused on the marginalization of depth treatments and sounded a rallying cry to protect them. Many of the conference attendees eagerly agreed to be part of our new mission, and PsiAN was born. Our goal was to create a big tent so that the efforts of diverse psychotherapy disciplines could amplify their effectiveness by speaking up for psychotherapy with a unified voice.
From its inception, we at PsiAN have raised concerns about the lack of access to intensive and effective treatment by those who need it most, and worked to increase awareness of the interplay of social, cultural, and intergenerational trauma, individual experience and internal life.
Our early efforts focused on supporting initiatives that were already ongoing. We supported efforts by colleagues to speak up for more inclusive graduate training, offered guidance regarding new legislation in Illinois mandating social/emotional screening for school-age children, and corrected the record when the popular press wrote about mental health but excluded depth treatments. Soon, supported by our growing Steering Committee, a more active vision of a true advocacy organization began to take shape. We obtained non-profit status, developed a website, and began to create a committee structure, as well as an open membership process so that both individuals and organizations could join our group and find their place within it.
Since then, we are proud of what we have been able to accomplish in our few years of existence. PsiAN has already taken its place among leading mental health advocacy organizations, and our voice has earned the respect of educators, policy makers, and clinicians from across the globe. They look to us to speak out and stand up for efforts to defend psychotherapy for the next generation and beyond. Our individual membership and Strategic Partners are growing rapidly, and we are fortunate to have assembled an Advisory Board of exemplary researchers, scholars and clinicians. Although our intention to assemble yearly conferences has been temporarily up-ended by the COVID-19 pandemic, our Childrens, Communications, Membership, Education and 501c4 Legislative Advocacy Committees have developed initiatives that are making a difference, all through 100% volunteer power.
Like the transformative therapies of depth, insight and relationship – “therapies that stick” — for which we advocate, PsiAN is on the path to becoming an effective, collaborative and responsive organization that sticks. We pledge to work diligently for as long as it takes to advocate for therapies of depth, insight and relationship, and to engage policy makers, the general public, and our own professional organizations in a re-humanization of psychotherapy for the next generation and beyond. Our mission is ambitious, and we need your help to accomplish it. Roll up your sleeves – let’s see what we can do together!
