About OMHC
Our Mental Health Collective exists to reimagine care by centering BIPOC voices, cultural practices, and ancestral knowledge — building systems where identity, language, tradition, and lived experience are sources of strength.
"We exist to make healing accessible for all"
Our Mission
Our Mental Health Collective exists to reimagine mental health care by centering BIPOC voices, cultural practices, and ancestral knowledge. We support clinicians, healers, and community members of color by confronting systemic harm, and creating spaces where identity, language, tradition, spirituality, and lived experience are understood as sources of strength and incorporated in the healing process
We affirm a wide spectrum of BIPOC communities — including Black, Indigenous, African, Asian, Pacific Islander, Arab/MENA, Latine, immigrant, refugee, multiracial, Queer, Trans, Disabled, and Neurodivergent communities — and believe our healing practices deserve to be protected, practiced, and honored.
Our work focuses on expanding access, uplifting culturally rooted providers, and building systems where care is affordable, liberatory, and community-driven. We embrace holistic healing, elevate lived experience as expertise, and stay committed to ongoing reflection, accountability, and anti-oppressive practice.
Ultimately, we envision a future where our communities can continue to heal, have access to providers who reflect them, and mental health and wellness services be guided by culture, justice, and collective care
From a grassroots circle in Grand Rapids to a growing statewide movement — our history reflects the communities that shaped us and the care we're still building.
2019 — Grand Rapids, MI
Founded as Mental Health Clinicians of Color Grand Rapids, OMHC began as a grassroots circle created by Rebecca Spann and founding board members Janee Beville, Wesley Morgan, and Loanna Abreu — a space for clinicians of color to connect, learn, and support one another in a field where they were often unseen.
Grassroots Beginnings2020–2023 — Statewide Expansion
As the pandemic deepened community need, OMHC expanded its reach through online learning, scholarships, and private practice support. A clinician directory, community funding, and professional development resources proved the vision had depth. In 2022, the organization officially became Our Mental Health Collective, reflecting a broader commitment to equity and culturally responsive care across Michigan.
Community Growth
2023–2025 — Statewide Network
OMHC grew into a statewide network with an expanded provider directory, new community partnerships, offline outreach tools, and a growing advisory base — bringing culturally rooted care directly to where communities live, gather, and heal across Michigan.
Infrastructure Built2026 — Building What's Next
Today, OMHC is more than a network — it's a community-led movement. We're deepening our infrastructure, expanding access across Michigan, and continuing to build the systems our communities have always deserved.
The FutureCore Values
We honor cultural lineage, challenge systemic harm, and affirm lived experience as knowledge. These values shape how we care for our communities and build a mental health ecosystem rooted in dignity.
We honor and uplift the healing practices, spiritual traditions, languages, and knowledge systems that come from our own people — refusing to dilute or justify them through a Western lens.
We challenge the notion that healing happens in isolation. Our cultures have survived through interdependence, family, shared resources, storytelling, and communal responsibility.
We recognize that mental health is deeply shaped by racism, colonialism, patriarchy, xenophobia, capitalism, and ableism. Healing requires us to confront these realities — not ignore them.
Healing should never be gated by cost, language, immigration status, or identity. We create spaces that feel safe, familiar, multilingual, and identity-affirming for BIPOC communities.
We reject the idea that Western academic training defines what is normal or worthy. Our lived realities, historical traumas, and cultural survival strategies deserve to be seen as wisdom — not pathology.
Healing is not limited to the mind. We embrace body, spirit, community, land, and ancestral connection — integrating spirituality, somatic practices, herbal traditions, storytelling, ritual, art, and ceremony.
Decolonization is not a brand — it is continuous inner work. We commit to unlearning internalized oppression, confronting power, repairing harm, and practicing integrity in every space we occupy.
What this means for our work
Our work is not abstract. It is expressed through the systems, spaces, and pathways we build for clinicians, healers, and community members across Michigan.
Visibility
We build platforms for BIPOC clinicians and wellness providers to be seen, supported, and resourced in ways that honor both professional practice and community-rooted care.
We construct pathways for community members to access care that reflects identity, affirms lived experience, and honors the full complexity of who they are.
We strengthen the pipeline for future healers of color through mentorship, professional training, education, and leadership cultivation.
We organize spaces where culture, language, spirituality, and story are not "extras" — they are the foundation. And we stand against the mental health industry's historic erasure while working toward a future where culturally rooted care is the standard, not a specialization.
