The FREEDOM Lab stands for Facilitating Research for Equity, Empowerment, and Decolonization of Mental Health. Our goal is to serve and empower marginalized communities, with a specific focus on mental health.
Our lab acknowledges that mental health does not exist in a vacuum. We adopt the framework of the social model of mental health and understand that mental health is not just an individual issue - the social circles, communities, cultures, and societies that we exist in work together to shape our development and wellbeing. To understand mental health, we have to understand a person's context; and to improve mental health, we have to tackle the underlying issues that impact us and our communities. Mental health and social justice are inextricable - we cannot separate social issues, such as oppression and systemic racism, from our experiences of mental health. To empower individuals and communities to improve mental health, we believe in helping people unpack their contexts and to understand psychology within a broader social, historical, and political context. To advocate for mental health is to advocate for justice, liberation, equity, and decolonization for all peoples.