Services
Peer support & assistance with care
Mel works alongside ProjectLETS in their mission to utilize and prioritize lived experience to provide peer support, centering the goals of community care, mutual aid, and non-hierarchical collaboration and provides peer mental health advocacy nationally. They also provide independent life coaching and peer support services available for a sliding scale fee. Please book a consultation or email if you’re interested in working together outside of ProjectLETS!
They bring ten years of experience in the field of psychology and care work and can confidently and expertly help folks to navigate Medicaid, Medicare, SSDI, and other government services. If you are interested in becoming a peer support client, please contact ProjectLETS directly.
Therapeutic support & process
Mel is in the midst of getting their Masters degree in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University Los Angeles, with a specialization in Applied Community Psychology. They are currently a MFT trainee at The Relational Center under supervision from Jami Winkel, LMFT (License #44036) providing slide-scale services to clients on the waitlist. Their approach to therapy is non-hierarchical, trauma-informed, with a relational gestalt and narrative family therapy focus. They are also currently receiving intensive training in Relational Gestalt and are starting an online asynchronous course in Internal Family Systems. Their anticipated graduation date is December 2023.
Community building & facilitation
For the last year, Mel has been a facilitator for the ProjectLETS’ Psychiatric Survivor Clinic - open to anyone who has been harmed by psychiatry and psychiatric treatment. This space offers opportunities for community care and peer support, strategizing and discussion, skill-sharing, and co-reflecting in closed clinic cohorts that meet for 2 hours every other week.
Mel is also as an administrator and moderator for the Radical Psychology discord server, a community dedicated to dreaming and creating alternatives to the current carceral mental health industrial complex.
Psychoeducational & process group facilitation
Mel has been trained in creating both psychoeducational and skills-based workshops as well as running emotional and psychological process groups. In 2022, they worked with Orion Queer and offered a CPTSD recovery process group with an abolitionist approach, with abuse and trauma viewed through a non-punitive and non-pathologizing lens.
Currently, Mel is an ongoing facilitator for the Gender Magic group at The Relational Center and for ProjectLETS’ Psychiatric Survivor Clinic.
Workshop creation & facilitation
Mel is currently in the midst of creating their first workshop series, Mad Skills: Crisis Planning and Support, to help train abolitionists (clinicians, radical organizers, and peers alike) on how use material skills and survivor knowledge to prevent contact with police forces and involuntary care. A shortened version of this workshop was offered during ProjectLETS’ Anti-Carceral Approaches to Suicide 2023 series.
They also host the Abolition in Psychiatry online panel and discussion forum regularly, with the goal of dreaming up new tactics and strategies for mental health service users, psychiatric survivors, and workers in the field to engage in the ongoing struggle for care and liberation.
Consultancy, evaluation, & other projects
The Applied Community Psychology specialization includes training in consultancy, evaluation, and grant writing. Mel has worked with the Los Angeles Spoonie Collective to help evaluate and streamline the internal processes of the organization as well as provided evaluation services to the Petaluma chapter of the mobile crisis teams started by Ben Adam.
Currently, Mel is working with IDHA to conduct an evaluation of their newly debuted Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum. IDHA developed the Core Curriculum to shift dominant medicalized narratives toward a paradigm of humanity, care, and support and to help fill a critical gap in both mental health education and movement organizing. The Core Curriculum provides a robust and grounded introduction for individuals who are early in exploring and unpacking the challenges of our modern mental health system, and unsure where to begin, and is currently open for registration!