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Jennifer Mullan

Biography

Jennifer Mullan trained as a clinical psychologist, worked in community mental health, and has logged extensive clinical experience. Her professional background includes psychology, education, community mental health, and practitioner training. She is based in Montclair, New Jersey, where she continues her work as an author, speaker, educator, and scholar-activist.


Mullan describes herself as a Black Panamanian, multiracial person of Irish, Italian, Panamanian, and Kuna Indigenous heritage. She has also publicly identified as a woman and as being on the queer fluid spectrum. In her work, she connects these experiences with broader questions of racialization, colonialism, privilege, historical trauma, and the limitations of conventional mental-health systems.


Mullan founded Decolonizing Therapy and developed the associated framework and educational work around politicizing mental-health practice. She created the Decolonizing Therapy Instagram in December 2017 and teaches the Politicizing Your Practice series. Her book, Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice, was published by W. W. Norton in 2023. She received ESSENCE magazine's 2020 Essential Hero Award in Mental Health. Her continuing work includes speaking, education, practitioner training, and the From Root to Bone podcast.


BQW Impact

Mullan's work is significant to Black queer communities because it connects mental health with race, queerness, colonialism, historical trauma, ancestry, and systemic inequality. Her public discussions of her own Black Panamanian and queer-fluid identities inform a body of work that questions how dominant therapeutic systems define distress, healing, and psychological wellbeing.


Through Decolonizing Therapy, Mullan has developed an educational framework that asks practitioners to examine the political and historical conditions surrounding mental health rather than treating distress solely as an individual issue. Her book and practitioner education bring collective and intergenerational trauma, ancestral knowledge, and the effects of colonialism into professional conversations about therapy and healing.


Notable Works

  • Decolonizing Therapy

    Mullan's framework and platform for examining mental health through political, ancestral, historical, and decolonial perspectives.

  • Politicizing Your Practice

    Mullan's educational series through Decolonizing Therapy that examines the political, historical, and systemic dimensions of therapeutic practice.

  • Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice (2023)

    Mullan's book examines colonial and historical trauma, institutional violence, and the political dimensions of mental-health practice.

  • From Root to Bone (2025)

    Mullan's podcast explores ancestry, collective health, liberation, grief, and decolonizing mental health.

Learn More
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