About me
Michelle Goodwin, PhD, LMHC is a licensed mental health counselor with over a decade of experience in community-based settings across Massachusetts. Her work has been shaped by years inside traditional psychiatric systems, where questions of dignity, voice, and belonging became central, and now guide her commitment to human rights–based care. Alongside her clinical work in private practice, she teaches part time at a local community college and volunteers with a large nonprofit organization, where she supports the exploration of human rights complaints for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Michelle earned her Ph.D. in Transformative Leadership and Counseling Psychology from Lesley University in 2024. Her qualitative research examines how psychiatric discourse shapes the boundaries of belonging for those labeled mentally ill, with a focus on belongingness as lived experience. Grounded in a commitment to social justice, her work centers dignity, relationality, and belongingness. Her research interrogates psychiatric discourse as a system of power, shaped by and reinforcing white supremacy, that constructs the boundaries of belonging and legitimizes exclusion. Outside of her professional roles, she finds connection in music, film, and time spent in nature.
