Often as a patient we feel uneasy about being authentic, having completely unfiltered, honest talks, about how much we are truly hurting with our therapists.

Hierarchy is nothing more or less than the assignment of power: one person over another. The designation of less and more. A legitimized, codified human valuation system. And it’s dangerous.

Part of the vision behind Rayo is to redefine what it means to be a Community Mental Health Center. We currently have two separate systems of mental healthcare: the Community Mental Health Center (or CMHC) for those with medicaid or without insurance, and the Private Practice for the privately insured. This doesn’t work for many reasons, but I’ll try to be brief.

Psychoanalyst and writer Johanna Dobrich is credited as a pioneer in clinical thought and study regarding survivor siblings, and noted for her interest in sibling relationships as sites of profound impact. Answering a question about why clinical theory has traditionally been focused on the hierarchical parent-child relationship over the lateral, sibling relationship, she says:

The Liberation Health model is a theory of human behavior that conceptualizes the problems of individuals and families that cannot be understood in isolation from the economic, political, cultural, and historical conditions which give rise to them.