PHOTO BY LAURA PETRILLA

Jessica Gurley
Owner of Social Work Consulting and Counseling, Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Jessica Gurley spends her time consulting with aspiring therapists and spreading awareness about mental health. She started her consulting firm in 2016 under a theme: “We all have mental health, but we all do not have mental illness.”

She wanted to dispel myths about mental health and to normalize therapy, especially in the Black community. When she was young, her first brush with social work was in her own family; her mother had substance-abuse problems and bipolar disorder. But when she saw how the social workers stepped in to help, she says, “I wanted to be that person for other families.”

She also is proud of her T-shirt company, Mental Health Ts, where she’s created a line specifically to promote mental health and therapy. For the community, she spends a lot of time creating custom events for veterans (and other groups) focused on mental health.

Gurley said the goal in her work “is to make mental health just as important as medical health and dental health.” She believes everyone should be emotionally and mentally evaluated as often as we have dental visits.