Most mental health clinicians have heard of group practices. Far fewer have heard of a mental health cooperative. And the difference between them is not just structural; it is a difference in who holds the power, who makes the decisions, and who benefits when things go well.
At Divergent Minds Collective, we chose the cooperative model deliberately when we founded DMC in 2025. This post explains what that means in practice, why it matters for clinicians in Washington State, and how it differs from the group practice model that dominates the field.
What a Cooperative Actually Is
A cooperative is a business entity owned and governed by its members. In a retail cooperative, the model closest to what DMC uses, the allied health businesses (owned by therapists) who work in the organization are also the businesses who own it. Think about it like a mall that’s owned by the stores inside. The mall offers utilities and marketing and the businesses connect with the community coming to the mall to share their product, in our case neuroaffirming health care. Decisions are made democratically. Profits or surpluses are distributed equitably among members rather than flowing primarily to a small group of owners or investors.
This is not a new idea. Cooperatives have existed for centuries in agriculture, banking, retail, and housing. The cooperative model is well-established in law and practice. What is relatively new is applying it explicitly to mental health practice.
How It Differs from a Group Practice
In a group practice, a practice owner or a small group of owners makes the decisions that govern how the practice operates. Clinicians join as employees or independent contractors. They may have input, but the structural power sits with ownership.
This arrangement can work well. Group practices offer real benefits: built-in referrals, shared administrative infrastructure, a sense of community, and lower overhead for individual clinicians than running a fully independent practice.
But the tradeoffs are real too. Clinicians in group practices typically give up a significant percentage of their income. They may have limited control over the clients they see, the rates they charge, or the direction the practice takes. If the practice owner’s values shift, or the business model changes, clinicians often have limited recourse.
In a cooperative, those dynamics are reversed. Members own the organization collectively. Governance is democratic — one member, one vote on the decisions that matter. No single person holds structural power over the others. If something is not working, members have a formal mechanism to change it.
What This Looks Like at DMC
Divergent Minds Collective is a mental health cooperative co-founded by Dr. Rachel Hughes (LMFT) and Hailee Windsor (LMHC, CN) in Pierce County, Washington. We are currently entering Phase 3 of our development, actively continuing to build our founding membership and become a Behavioral Health Agency in Washington to be able to collaborate with the WA Health Care Authority in order to provide services to people on state insurance like Molina and Apple Health as well as on private insurances.
Members of DMC share office space, business costs, clinical resources, marketing infrastructure, and referral networks. They participate in governance decisions. They retain full autonomy over their own practices: who they see, what they charge, how they work. What they gain is a professional home and a community of peers, without surrendering independence to get it.
This is what we mean when we say community without compromise.
Why a Cooperative for Mental Health?
Mental health practice has specific features that make the cooperative model a particularly strong fit.
Clinicians are trained to operate with significant autonomy. The therapeutic relationship depends on clinician judgment, and that judgment cannot be easily standardized or controlled from above without damaging clinical quality. Group practice models that impose heavy administrative control can conflict with good clinical practice.
Neurodivergent clinicians, clinicians from marginalized communities, and clinicians committed to anti-oppressive practice often find traditional group practice environments require significant masking and conformity to function within them. A democratically governed cooperative can be structured to reflect the actual values and needs of its members rather than a top-down institutional culture.
And clinician burnout (already at crisis levels in Washington State and nationally) is significantly driven by isolation, lack of autonomy, and the gap between values and working conditions. A cooperative structure addresses all three of those drivers directly.
Is DMC Right for Every Clinician?
No. And we would rather say that clearly than oversell the model.
A cooperative requires members to participate in governance, not just benefit from services. It requires a tolerance for the slower, more deliberate decision-making that comes with democratic process. It works best for clinicians who want community and are willing to invest in building it, not just consume it.
DMC is currently building Phase 3 infrastructure. We are actively working on insurance credentialing support, expanded administrative services, health benefits for members. We are transparent about where we are and where we are going.
What is available now: a professional community, shared office and online spaces, a referral network, marketing support, clinical resources, access to discounted CEUs and supervision, and a genuine peer community of clinicians who share values around neurodivergent-affirming and anti-oppressive practice.
For WA Clinicians Considering an Alternative
If you are a Washington State licensed clinician (e.g., LMFT, LMHC, LICSW, SUDP, or allied provider) and you have been navigating the tension between wanting a professional community and not wanting to give up control of your practice, the cooperative model is worth understanding.
We built DMC because we were navigating that tension ourselves and could not find an existing structure that resolved it. So we built one.
Interested in learning more about DMC membership? Visit us here for current tier options and pricing.
For a direct comparison of the cooperative model against group practice and private practice, see our post: [Group Practice vs. Mental Health Cooperative — What WA Clinicians Actually Need to Know].
