Since 1974 The Wright Institute Los Angeles has offered the assurance of its services to the larger Los Angeles community. In the past year WILA’s expenses have gone up, while simultaneously patients’ ability to pay for these services has gone down. Reliance on the support of community members and private donors has become greater as previous support from federal assistance has become scarce. WILA needs to fill this gap and we are turning to our community members to ask for your help in doing that.
Filling Gaps in Mental Health
Since its founding, WILA has filled an important gap in the mental health services offered in Los Angeles. It has uniquely provided affordable, long-term, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, conducted by highly trained therapists to those in our community that might not otherwise be able to receive these services. This is coming at a time in which the enduring remnants of the pandemic, economic challenges and efforts toward needed social justice have seen the need for these services grow beyond providers’ ability to keep up. Each year WILA provides over 14,000 hours of psychotherapy to Los Angelenos. Since 2020, the addition of telehealth has enabled WILA to serve even more individuals and couples.
As therapists, we are always aware of- and navigating in the spaces in between, “the gaps.” We fill a lot of gaps for those who come to therapy and are in some part of their lives struggling to manage to find their own support, fulfillment and stability. WILA stands between the gap of their emotional needs, and where their friends and family are able to meet them, the gap between their feelings and their own understanding, and the gap between their needs for care and nurturance, and how they were raised. The therapeutic relationship helps to fill the emotional gaps that individuals experience in the world.
Training for therapists also helps to bridge gaps for therapists. Psychoanalytic training is an increasingly rare, expensive, time-consuming endeavor. And while changing modalities in education require new, modernized methods and institutions to build and help students grow. Psychoanalytic work now sits at the bridge of the past and future and leans on the next generation of practitioners to continue a long line of history and to recreate those traditions for a cutting-edge future. WILA provides a unique and priceless opportunity for many trainees who are exposed to depth therapy for the first time within both her digital and concrete walls. And this begins a new path for her graduates, learning the difficult task of charging a fee and setting a frame with their own clients in a psychoanalytically informed context.
We Need Your Support to Bridge Gaps in the Community
Participating in our end of year give is YOUR CHANCE to take action by supporting WILA’s ongoing efforts as well as future work to provide quality mental health to our Los Angeles community members! The support WILA receives will contribute to maintaining this gap-filling bridge for both patients and training therapists, and link together a community that has grown in WILA’s care.
WILA does not rely on government funding, but rather on donations from individuals in the community who care. 80% of all our funds go directly toward helping the people we serve and securing the future of our services. To achieve these important goals, we need your help to fill our budget gap.
We appreciate any contribution and guarantee that your donation will directly help those seeking therapy to receive it. An additional way to express your support for our work is by following us on INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, & TWITTER.
Please click here for more information on our services, on our team of culturally competent therapists, on our social action projects, and what WILA is all about.
If you feel inspired to help us help our community members and continue to fill this gap in mental health care, please click here to make your contribution to our efforts.
Happy and Safe Holidays!