My aunt never called it depression. She called it "being in a mood". Family said she was "going through it." When she finally ended up in an ER, everybody acted as if we had not watched her disappear for months. My community never lacked awareness. We could read the signs clearly. What we lacked were systems we could trust, people who would take us seriously, and tools to navigate the crisis once we recognized it. I grew up watching people cycle in and out of jail not because they were dangerous, but because they were poor. Unpaid fines became warrants.Fathers avoided turning themselves in because a week of work meant their families might be homeless by the time they got out. Drug abuse, really self-medication for untreated bipolar disorder, landed people in cells instead of treatment. The system called it personal failure. I knew it was structural abandonment. My own family mirrored what I saw in the neighborhood. Bipolar was "moody." Depression was "lazy." Drug use was a moral failing, not a symptom. The stigma kept people suffering in silence or self-destructing in public. But even when the system failed, we had each other. Neighbors brought groceries when someone was too depressed to leave the house. The cousin who knew which public defender to call. The church mother who could talk someone down without clinical language. We had people who understood the struggle wasn't just in your head…it was in your rent, your criminal record, or your exhaustion from working two jobs that still didn't cover bills. We were only lacking someone to put a name to the pain and offer solutions. That's why I chose social work over traditional therapy. As a first-generation college student and Black woman, I'm building the path I wish existed for my family. A regular therapist might help you process your anxiety, but a social worker asks why you're anxious, then helps you apply for benefits, connects you to legal aid, advocates for your kid's IEP, and still sits with your grief. Social work recognized what I felt growing up: you can't separate someone's mental health from material reality. You can't treat depression without addressing the eviction notice. You can't counsel substance abuse without acknowledging self-medication of pain the healthcare system ignored. Traditional treats people like isolated individuals who need internal adjustments. Social work sees people embedded in systems. Survival required more than positive thinking, it required someone who understood every level of the struggle and was willing to fight on all of them. If I could make one significant change, it would be mandating feasible ratios of social workers, counselors, and psychologists in every public school, funded federally. Mental health access shouldn't be rare as winning the lottery. My MSW program has exposed me to the reality, the mental health model in schools are neglected. In my area there is one social worker stretched across three schools. There's no universe where that adequately serves every child who needs support. It does not promote early prevention. As for teletherapy, Teletherapy allowed access to care without performing the respectability politics of in-person therapy. But it also assumes you have reliable internet. We celebrated teletherapy as "increasing access" while ignoring that it recreated the same inequities, digitally. We should let communities design their own platforms. Maybe that's text therapy with 24-hour response times instead of live sessions. Maybe it's voice memos. Maybe it's integrating therapists into community apps and spaces instead of expecting people to come to clinical portals that feel cold and institutional. Real innovation means building technology around people's lives.

One critical question I believe we are failing to ask is “How are we ensuring that the voices of those most impacted by oppression are not only included but centered in creating the strategies meant to liberate them?” The deeper issue isn't just inclusion, but power: who gets to define what liberation looks like, what strategies are "realistic," and what compromises are acceptable? When those most impacted aren't driving strategy, we risk creating solutions that address symptoms visible to those with more privilege while missing the root dynamics that those with lived experience understand most intimately. This question demands we examine whether our organizing structures, funding priorities, leadership development, and strategic planning processes actually transfer power to those who have the most at stake in the outcomes. As a social work major, I've noticed that while many of my classes focus on liberation, the methods we discuss are often developed without input from the communities we aim to serve. There's a gap between academic theory and lived experiences that we rarely address directly. I always ask my self, "What if we approached this differently?', not just by educating affected communities about the "technical" aspects of the issues they face, but by creating genuine spaces for them to analyze, critique, and redesign the very methods we're taught to implement? This would mean moving beyond asking people to validate existing approaches and instead inviting them to fundamentally shape how we understand both problems and solutions. It would require acknowledging that those who navigate oppressive systems daily often have insights about their mechanics and potential weak points that academic frameworks miss entirely. This shift would challenge social work education to become truly collaborative, where impacted communities aren't just case studies or service recipients, but co-educators helping to rewrite the methods that claim to serve liberation. There's a troubling pattern where professional education creates an unintended barrier between those trained in liberation work and the communities they aim to serve. When we learn technical language for oppressive mechanisms we often assume this knowledge gives us special insight into experiences that affected communities know intimately but may not have academic vocabulary for. This creates a dangerous dynamic where we begin acting on behalf of people rather than with them, convinced that our theoretical frameworks make us better equipped to identify and address their struggles. But here's what we miss: when we share these analytical tools and technical terms with impacted communities, something powerful happens. People begin connecting dots they always sensed but couldn't name. They start recognizing patterns across different spaces and systems. A parent realizes that what their child experiences in school connects to what they face at work, and both tie to broader structural forces. Technical language becomes a bridge to deeper analysis, not an end in itself. When communities have access to these frameworks, they can articulate their experiences in ways that policy makers and institutions are forced to take seriously, while also developing their own theoretical contributions that often surpass what academic spaces produce. The goal isn't to make everyone speak in academic jargon, but to ensure that analytical tools become resources for collective understanding rather than credentials that separate "experts" from those who live the realities we claim to study.