Bio

Public Bio (long):

Neha Bhat (ABT, ATR-P) is a licensed Sex and Trauma Therapist who practices psychotherapy from an art-based, creative wellness lens between India and the USA. Having worked in sexual-assault-trauma care at global institutions like the University of Michigan, the Art Institute of Chicago, Rush Medical Centre and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, among others, she employs trauma-focused therapy from a depth-based, multicultural context for people who have survived and perpetrated sexual violence and teaches therapists to use art as a tool of living and coping against systems of oppression.

Neha began her career in the theatre, art and film industry in Mumbai, where she worked as a dramaturg and performer, which is also where arts-based therapy sparked her interest as an area of further study. Her professional networks in the film and theatre industry both in Mumbai and in Chicago have impacted her work greatly as a sex therapist, resulting in her consulting on various films, documentaries and reality TV shows written around sex and intimacy across various OTT platforms including Amazon Prime, Netflix US and Lionsgate Play.

Neha is currently working on her first book, an empowering work that directly addresses how problems of mental health and questions of sexuality can be tackled in a rapidly changing India. This book is represented by A Suitable Agency.

Public Bio (short):

Neha Bhat specializes in feminist oriented, trauma-informed art therapy and counseling
between India and the U.S. She employs trauma-focused therapy for survivors of sexual violence, offers crisis-counseling, and uses art as a radical tool of living and coping against systems of oppression. Her work as an interdisciplinary artist informs her professional counseling practice, enabling her to bring into the clinical setting elements of play through visual art, theatre, and movement in the clinical setting.

My deeper journey in creative psychotherapy:

I first studied arts for social practice at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art and Design, Bangalore with an academic scholarship at the University of Michigan‘s interdisciplinary arts program. My career began in the theatre, art and film industry in Mumbai, where I worked as a dramaturg and arts educator. I developed an innovative arts education tool for theatre teachers named Making Learning Visible for Jehan Manekshaw’s Theatre Professionals Arts Education Program.

Arts education interested me deeply at the time, and I loved working with children in-depth. This interest lead me to serving as a special-needs focused arts educator for children between the ages of 5 and 17 at the Gateway School of Mumbai, India. Here, I trained vigorously with a team of speech and language therapists, physiotherapists and arts therapists to meet the specific challenges of the disability justice community through special education. The team lead by Mrs Indira Bodani, pioneered in showcasing student artwork in a grand way to spread awareness about disability-sensitivity through creativity.

It was during my time as a teacher, that I recognized my innate interest in trauma education. Children would use art to express emotions that were difficult to put into words and concepts. Their art would reveal their inner life in such profound ways that this opened my mind more towards studying the arts as a tool for healing. I trained in Mindfulness-oriented Art Therapy from an Indian Buddhist Psychology Program in Pune, India at the only Art Therapy Training program in India, at the time.

As I further developed as a practitioner, my background in arts as social practice and studies in Art Therapy came together in the field of community mental health. I served at different local prisons in Maharashtra as well as in Detroit, USA as an Art Therapy Facilitator, under the mentorship of Sarita Ganesh, at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and at the Prison Creative Arts Project at the University of Michigan. The aim of clinical therapy interventions at the prisons was to help incarcerated communities of people cope with challenges such as self-harm, depression, chronic pain, separation from their very young children, coping with long-wait time for court trials, sexual violence within prison communities and so on.

More information about the Prison Creative Arts Project can be found here.

After several years of community mental health practice, I chose advanced higher education in Clinical Trauma Counseling from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At this point, my work experience as a bicultural psychotherapist had led me to focus on the intersections of sex, sexuality, sexual violence, gender and the law. Mental health practice in restorative and transformative justice systems were an area of interest to me, especially during the peak of the #metoo movement, which lead me to create this piece.

I completed training and clinical practice in sexual violence focused art psychotherapy, conflict coaching, couples and family therapy under the Gottman Method, the Terry Real Institute, and the mentorship of several clinicians. I served as a rape crisis psychotherapist in Chicago, Mumbai and Ann Arbor for several years before transitioning into full-time private practice and teaching. I now consult on various films, documentaries and reality TV shows written around sex and intimacy across various OTT platforms including Amazon Prime, Netflix US and Lionsgate Play.

Over the past 11+ years of clinical practice, I have served the following categories of people :

• children between 5 and 15 years of ago, with special needs, on the neurodivergent spectrum (Autism, ADHD and so on) as an art therapist and teacher
  
• adult survivors of sexual trauma and adult perpetrators of sexual trauma – individuals, couples and family units impacted by sexual violence
  
• higher educational institutions and Title IX offices in the US, in offering better pathways of access to justice and healing to survivors of sexual violence.
  
• adult women (both cis, trans and non-binary) under incarceration – both in Indian and American prison systems

With multiple Masters degrees, advanced training and clinical licensure in India and the United States, I aim to continuously improve my understanding of psychotherapy and serve people better.

My Ethics:

(or a few things that might be helpful to know about working with me):

1. I practice therapy from a queer, intersectional trauma-informed, depth-focused perspective. I work well with clients who are queer, marginalized and/or bicultural in India, in the US, and other parts of the world online and in-person.
   
   
2. I am spiritually focused and culturally informed. I enjoy working with such complexities in our everyday lives to guide people to arrive at complex, enriching answers for themselves about the many aspects of human life.
   
   
3. I have a wide range of work experience in working with neurodivergence as powerful uniqueness. I believe that broken systems will shift when we accept our own uniqueness and differences in a less conflicted way.
   
   
4. I am depth-based, which means any project I take on will have me offer you a deeper insight into what you may not be seeing. I am not open to quick consultation calls by media houses or writers who might want a sex therapist’s advice. If you’d like to have insight on your project, please consider budgeting for the same from the beginning for quality outcomes.
   
   
5. I am not a sex educator. I do not provide consultations for individuals, companies, schools or colleges on sex education. Here is a list of sex educators I recommend:
   
   Sex therapy is part of a larger therapeutic relationship with a trained mental health professional, I’m a trauma therapist who has been extensive training in working with sexual trauma, kink, alternative sexualities and the like.
   
   
6. I do not endorse health products, or natural healing products in general on my social media. If I occasionally do endorse a brand/show that is spreading a sensible message to a large audience, it comes from my own professional expertise and ethical alignment.
   
   
7. I have designed my practice in a way that I can offer sliding-scale therapy slots to people in need and relief funds to organizations who do rescue work. I do not accept requests for free labor of any sort and often channel resources from work to areas in need.
   
   
8. I develop and offer free mental health resources to the public in a few places:
   
   – On Medium
   – On Instagram
   
   This is my way of creating open access for more people to do inner work practices for a more mature, emotionally healthy, mentally well society.
   
9. If you have benefitted from the same and are not a current client at the practice, please consider buying our practice a book that strengthens our ability to run a sustainable practice: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/nehabhat

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