More sustainable care. More meaningful connection.

Finding the right therapist can be hard and staying with one long enough to build trust and see real progress can be even harder. Many clients have experienced the frustration of starting over again and again due to burnout, turnover, or rigid systems that don’t serve either therapist or client.

At the Playhouse Collective, we’ve built something different.

We’re a group of independent therapists who choose to work together- not in a clinic or a group practice, but in a collective model that honors both autonomy and community. Each of us runs our own business, which allows us to work sustainably, avoid burnout, and stay deeply connected to our clients and our purpose. In our collective, 100% of your therapy fees go toward supporting your therapist and their small business. The benefits of this are explained further in our FAQs below but at the minimum this means:

  • You won’t get reassigned or passed around.

  • You won’t lose your therapist just as the work is getting deeper.

  • You’ll be working with someone who is choosing to be here for the long haul.

We believe that healing is most powerful when it happens in the context of equity, consistency, and real relationship. Our model allows us to offer just that- thoughtful, identity-affirming, long-term care from seasoned professionals who are in it with you.

Because when therapists are supported, clients are too.
And that’s how lasting change happens.

Why our model matters

 FAQs

  • The Playhouse Collective is not a business in and of itself. It is an organization with each member running their own business. This makes each practitioner their own boss and thus empowered to bring their own unique voice, style and skills to the table. As far as the Playhouse Collective goes, we are a horizontal organization which means we make decisions together with no official leader. There are founding members who have taken it upon themselves to be on the admin committee. The admin committee maintain the organization but also make decisions as a team.

  • Each member of the Playhouse Collective is a seasoned psychotherapist with years of experience. Most of us are licensed by the Board of Behavioral Sciences in California or the California Board of Psychology and members who are still earning their license have a supervisor who is licensed by one of these entitites. We hold ourselves to a high level of integrity in our practices and we have bi-weekly meetings where we support one another in case consultation. As seasoned professionals with a wealth of experience, we know how to run our own practices successfully. When each therapist manages their own resources but shares collectively when it makes sense to, we have the freedom to run more efficiently and cost-effectively.

    Capitalistic corporations are all too common in the mental health field and we question if the group practice or clinic model makes sense anymore in our current economic and social reality.

  • Since our profession is women-dominated, historically we as therapists have faced many barriers to fair pay and thus, a quality of life congruent with all our years of education and training. We are told to not expect much for pay and to generously give our emotional labor for free. We are discouraged from bringing the conversation about pay into the conversation about healing. Given the high level of burnout and turnover in our field, we ask ourselves- who does that really serve? Who benefits when client and therapist both miss out on high quality mental healthcare? We believe that capitalistic business structures that leave therapists taking home around 50% (or less!) of what they earn is not conducive to healing. 

    Does this situation sound familiar? We are experiencing this level of economic inequality on a broad scale across all business and government. Many of our clients are suffering due to these systems of inequality and bring these challenges to our therapy. How can we bring about true healing when we are recreating and suffering under the same exact oppressive systems? 

    When therapists are resourced enough to rest, meet our needs and thrive, we can show up for our clients fully and go the extra mile. At the Playhouse Collective, we envision a better world. The least we can do is build a mental health care system that inspires us to do our best work with our clients.

  • Each member of the Playhouse Collective has chosen to be in close colleague-ship with the collective and we have structures in place to promote our ongoing teamwork. We have group consultation meetings every two weeks, we have a group chat where we support each other and we also all get together as friends! This synergy and positive energy is powerful, and we all feel much happier in our work because of it. We also share client family members, siblings, couples, group clients and more since we feel confident in referring to one another. As mentioned in our values, we all are committed to growing and learning in this environment where we are paid fairly. The benefit is felt by our clients who are supported within our collective as well. 

  • As therapists who are committed to social justice, being well resourced makes it possible for us to offer a wide sliding scale to the community. Since this model allows us to keep 100% of our collections, we can more easily re-invest back into local needs such as support for Eaton Fire survivors, immigrant communities and neighbors facing financial hardship. This re-investment also shows up through more flexibility and ability to accommodate client needs. There is more time, emotional space and mental capacity for addressing needs on many fronts for our clients. We are also eager to provide free workshops for our community addressing various needs now that we have an improved capacity level thanks to this sustainable model.

  • Please do! That’s why we made this page :)

    We hope to provide collective-development resources in the future.