Solidarity Therapy: Reimagining Mental Health Care Through Belonging, Access, and Collective Healing
- Great Story
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
As conversations around mental health grow louder, one Canadian practice is quietly reshaping what care looks like when safety, culture, and access are treated as essentials—not extras.
Mental health care has entered a moment of reckoning. While awareness has increased globally, many individuals and families still struggle to find therapy that feels truly safe, culturally responsive, and financially accessible. For communities navigating trauma, marginalisation, or systemic barriers, support can often feel out of reach—or misaligned with lived experience.
It is within this context that Solidarity Therapy has emerged as a different kind of practice—one built not just around clinical expertise, but around the idea that healing is relational, contextual, and deeply human.
Founded in 2021 and based in Langley, British Columbia, Solidarity Therapy operates as a multidisciplinary counselling collective serving individuals, couples, and families across a wide range of mental health needs.
Website: https://www.solidaritytherapy.ca/
A Practice Grounded in Liberation and Care
Solidarity Therapy was founded by Jessie Dhaliwal, a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Canadian Certified Counsellor, whose work is rooted in trauma-focused care and social justice-oriented practice.
Rather than viewing mental health challenges in isolation, Jessie and her team approach healing through an intersectional lens—recognising how identity, culture, history, and systems of power shape individual experience. This perspective informs every aspect of the clinic’s work, from therapeutic modalities to client intake, language, and accessibility.
At its core, Solidarity Therapy is built on a simple but powerful belief: individual healing contributes to collective healing.
Therapy Designed Around the Whole Person
Unlike single-modality practices, Solidarity Therapy brings together a diverse team of licensed counsellors, wellness practitioners, and support professionals—each contributing specialised expertise to a shared mission.
The clinic offers a broad range of evidence-based and experiential modalities, including:
Trauma-focused therapies such as EMDR and LENS Neurofeedback
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)
Art Therapy and Play Therapy for expressive and developmental needs
Couples and family counselling using approaches like the Gottman Method
Somatic and body-based practices supporting nervous system regulation
This diversity allows care to be tailored rather than prescribed—meeting clients where they are, rather than forcing them into a one-size-fits-all framework.
Access as a Core Value, Not a Side Program
For Solidarity Therapy, access is not an afterthought—it is central to the clinic’s model.
The practice offers direct billing to a wide range of extended health providers, as well as to ICBC, CVAP, Autism Funding, and other support programs. Recognising the financial barriers many people face, Solidarity Therapy also provides sliding-scale options and low-cost counselling sessions with supervised student counsellors.
By lowering practical barriers to care, the clinic ensures that therapy is not reserved only for those with privilege, but available to those who need it most.
Creating Space for Marginalised Voices
Solidarity Therapy explicitly centres communities often underserved by traditional mental health systems, including BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals. The team works from an anti-oppressive, culturally sensitive framework—continually engaging in learning and unlearning to better understand how systemic inequities affect mental well-being.
From land acknowledgements to community partnerships, the practice is intentional about situating healing within a broader social and historical context. Therapy here is not just about symptom reduction, but about reclaiming agency, dignity, and belonging.
A Collective Model of Care
What distinguishes Solidarity Therapy is its collective approach. The clinic brings together counsellors, massage therapists, Reiki practitioners, wellness consultants, and client care coordinators—creating an integrated environment where mental, emotional, and somatic care can coexist.
This collaborative structure allows clinicians to consult, refer, and support one another, ensuring clients benefit from shared expertise rather than fragmented care. It also creates meaningful employment, mentorship, and growth opportunities within the mental health field.
Giving Back to the Community
Beyond the therapy room, Solidarity Therapy is deeply engaged in community care.
The practice supports community organisations through volunteering, donations, and partnerships, shares mental health education and resources openly, and actively works to deconstruct stigma around counselling through public dialogue and social platforms.
By investing in people—clients, clinicians, and communities alike—the clinic reinforces its belief that mental wellness is inseparable from connection and social support.
A Quiet but Powerful Shift in Care
Solidarity Therapy’s growth has not been driven by expansion for its own sake. Instead, it has been shaped by trust—built one relationship at a time.
As mental health conversations continue to evolve, practices like Solidarity Therapy point toward a future where care is not only clinically sound, but also compassionate, inclusive, and accessible.
In a world where many are seeking not just therapy, but understanding, Solidarity Therapy stands as a reminder that healing happens best in spaces where people feel seen, respected, and held—in true solidarity.
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