Why We’re Becoming OutPsych: A Letter to Our Community
Three years ago, I started Integra Mental Health with a philosophy that psychiatry should equal science + soul. I didn’t have much of a plan for branding. I picked the name quickly—integrative psychiatry was my niche, and "Integra" seemed good enough. I chose a simple Squarespace color palette, grabbed a free Wix logo, and got to work on what actually mattered: building systems to care for patients well.
Honestly? I'm not even sure people said the name right - whatever “right” is. Some said it how I’d imagined it—inTEGra (like the Acura car), others said INtegra. It bothered me a little that I’d picked something people couldn’t even agree on a pronunciation for, but I didn't have a better idea, and I wasn't going to let a practice name get in the way of doing the work.
But here we are, three years later. The practice isn't just me anymore—we're a team of clinicians, administrative staff, and a growing training and consultation business focused on trans-affirming healthcare. And more importantly, who we serve has come into sharper focus.
We're not just "integrative psychiatry". We've become a trusted referral for queer, trans, and neurodivergent folks—and anyone with medical trauma or a long history of providers who just didn't get it. We pride ourselves in being the ones who get it, and work hard to get it right for the folks we serve.
And now—Integra Mental Health just doesn't communicate who we are anymore.
What OutPsych Means
Out is about celebrating the queer community—being out, living authentically, refusing to hide. But it’s more than just queerness—it’s about anyone who’s found that a part of themselves was at odds with the world around them. Who’s felt forced to invent new ways to thrive when nothing was built for you. That experience—while fundamentally queer as bell hooks describes it—cuts across many identities, and drives a variety of unmasking journeys we’ve borne witness to. So for us, Out is about celebrating and supporting your journey back home to yourself.
Psych is what we do. Our practice is primarily psychiatric care, led by practitioners with specialization in psychiatric care and psychotherapy. That part’s pretty straightforward.
And OutPsych is about how these two things come together. It’s the practice of swimming upstream while the current flows towards seeing people one body system at a time, one diagnosis at a time, and one symptom cluster at a time. And honestly? It's about outpsyching ourselves—our training, our biases, our reflexive urge to categorize and diagnose before we've really listened.
OutPsych means we don't stop thinking or questioning ourselves.
OutPsych centers the celebration of queerness and neurodivergence as vital to an inclusive and safe society—not as tolerable variations, but as essential forms of human diversity that challenge oppressive norms.
OutPsych is a practice philosophy that rejects thoughtless pathologizing in favor of integrating individual liberation with evidence-informed treatment. Because the evidence matters—and so does the question of who got to define what counts as evidence in the first place.
Welcome to OutPsych
If you've been working with us through the Integra days—thank you. You've been part of this evolution, teaching us how to be better with every session, every question, every moment you trusted us with your story.
If you're just finding us now—welcome. We’re glad you’re here, and hope that you can find something useful in these pages, or in working with us.
Sincerely,
Jess Romeo
Founder of OutPsych
