As a young woman seeking holistic, trauma-informed, culturally relevant, healing-centered mental healthcare for myself, and later as a physician and foster mom seeking the same for my foster children, I experienced the existing gaps in psychiatric services. As I sought to weave together a team of professionals and healers to support me and my foster kids, and saw what healing and empowerment was possible with a holistic approach, I was inspired to become a force for good change within psychiatry – helping to move the needle towards mental health care that is individualized to meet the needs of diverse peoples and communities.
Every day I am inspired by the power I witness within each child, adult, and community to heal, re-wire, re-integrate on the healing journey, no matter what one has been through. The healing process at its best involves a reclamation of one’s joy, sense of meaning, belonging, purpose, authenticity, and empowerment.
I recently collaborated on a text book Embodied Women Leaders: Peacebuilding, Protest, & Professions through the International Leadership Association. I’m also honored to announce the creation of a new 501c3 nonprofit EARTH: Empowering All Relatives To Heal. EARTH’s mission is to support BIPOC individuals and communities in the U.S. (and eventually all around the globe) to utilize access to healing-centered, culturally-congruent, mind-body medicine and Integrative Health to reclaim their vision for whole health and wellbeing.
Noshene Ranjbar, MD, DFAACAP, ABOIM
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Director, Integrative Psychiatry Program