As mental health and substance use professionals navigate increasingly complex social, political, and systemic challenges, traditional treatment models often fail to fully address the lived realities of justice-impacted individuals and marginalized communities. This presentation explores how radical healing frameworks can be applied to addiction counseling and behavioral health settings to move beyond symptom management toward liberation-centered care.

Participants will examine how stigma, punitive systems, racialized narratives, and biased clinical language can recreate harm within treatment environments. Using trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and social justice-oriented approaches, this session will challenge providers to reimagine engagement, documentation, supervision, and treatment planning through a healing-centered lens.

Grounded in principles of collective care, dignity, resilience, and empowerment, this workshop introduces strategies inspired by decolonized practice, restorative approaches, and community-rooted healing traditions such as Ubuntu. Special attention will be given to individuals navigating re-entry, surveillance, and post-incarceration stress who are often underserved in traditional behavioral health systems.

Participants will leave with practical tools to disrupt bias, strengthen therapeutic alliances, and create spaces where recovery and mental wellness are rooted in humanity rather than punishment.