An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping: A Radical Community Building Project

As diagnostic psychotherapy loses its "magick and wonder," many are seeking out alternative, non-medicalized approaches to therapeutics and wellness. Chris Hoff (host of The Radical Therapist Podcast), Erin Segal & Julie Cho (Thick Press) embarked on a journey to explore a sprawling, uncharted world of radical therapies, social work, healing and wellness modalities.

Their recently published, voluptuously-designed Encyclopedia maps 250 multidisciplinary practices, methodologies, and concepts useful to radical helpers —creating a rhizomic, polyphonic collection that "prefigures a world where multiple love- and freedom-enabling realities can coexist.”

• Who did they meet?

• What practices did they discover?

• Did encyclopedia-building galvanize community?

• Where’s the radicalness in giving help?

• Can we catch a glimpse of a radically giving world?

In this celebratory conversation, the Institute’s Jennifer Bullock & Janet Wootten introduce Chris, Erin and Julie, along with a few of the Encyclopedia’s radical, global practitioners: Care Pods (HyoYoung Minna Kim), Relationality (Sadaf Vidha & Aryan Somaiya); and Poverty-Aware Social Work/Resistance (Michal Krumer-Nevo).

Join the Conversation!

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Participant Biographies

Chris Hoff is a narrative therapist, marriage & family therapist, educator, and founder of the California Family Institute, a nonprofit community counseling and training center. His work bridges therapy, organizational systems, and social justice. Chris hosts The Radical Therapist podcast and co-edited An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping.

Erin Segal is a social worker and publisher based in Washington, D.C. She co-founded Thick Press. Erin’s clinical and editorial work centers on anti-oppressive, relational, and curiosity-driven approaches to social work. She co-edited An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping.

Julie Cho is a graphic designer, educator, and co-founder of Thick Press. As a partner in the design studio Omnivore, her work spans publication, exhibition, and identity design. Julie teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and brings a collaborative, justice-oriented lens to visual storytelling. She co-edited and designed An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping.

HyoYoung Minna is a former public school educator. She now develops social-emotional literacy curricula for K-8 and offers group facilitation that integrates nervous system science with a deep commitment to justice and relational healing. Based in Seattle on Duwamish land, she identifies as a lifelong student of the natural world and of how we "human" together — always in service of connection, healing, and collective transformation.

Michal Krumer-Nevo is the David and Dorothy Schwartzman Chair in Community Development, a professor at the Spitzer Department of Social Work at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and honorary president of the Israeli Center for Qualitative Research of People and Societies. A clinical social worker turned activist-scholar, her work focuses on poverty, feminism, and critical social work. She is the founder of the Poverty-Aware Paradigm (PAP), now a nationally adopted model in Israel’s social services.

Sadaf Vidha / Arafati is a Goa-based facilitator and therapist. She is the founder of Guftagu Counseling and Psychotherapy Services. She works with clients of various age groups addressing issues such as anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship concerns, and self-esteem. Her therapeutic approach blends postmodern frameworks, evidence-based practices, and depth psychology. She also consults for training, workshops and thought leadership for organizations, therapists and lay people, believing that the culture and the clinic slip into each other and must also inform each other. Trained in arts-based therapy, queer-affirmative counseling, eastern mind traditions and family systems work, Sadaf brings lived experience from her Muslim background to her practice.

Hugh Polk is a psychiatrist and social therapist with over four decades of experience integrating the radically humanistic approach of social therapeutics into diverse mental health settings. A longtime faculty member at the East Side Institute, he teaches social therapeutics to therapists and coaches committed to development, collaboration, and community-building beyond diagnosis. He co-leads the East Side Institute’s Creating Our Mental Health and is helping expand the project into rural Uganda through a partnership with Let the Girl Be, Uganda.

Aryan Somaiya is a mental health practitioner and co-founder of Guftagu Counseling and Psychotherapy Services. He is committed to building an ethical and socially just field of care. With a background in psychology and community-based practice, Aryan works alongside clients to address not only personal mental health struggles but also the social and environmental conditions that shape them. Aryan believes that care must be rooted in equity, access, and respect for lived experience. Through therapeutic work, research, and advocacy, Aryan envisions a mental health field that truly supports all people in their wholeness and complexity. He is co creator of queer affirmative counselling practices manual and trans affirmative mental health care guidelines. He is trained in arts based therapy and practices Buddhist psychology principles.