Johanne Sorto Sura
Clinical mental health nurse and psychotherapist
A member of the Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers du Québec and holder of a psychotherapist permit issued by the Ordre des psychologues du Québec, Johanne has practised for more than fifteen years across a wide range of clinical settings.
A story of something handed down
Johanne's path into care began as something handed down. Her mother, a physician in El Salvador, became a licensed practical nurse in Canada. She passed on a simple, deep conviction: accompanying people in their vulnerability is a privilege.
A clinical nurse since 2008 and a psychotherapist since 2021, she has worked in geriatrics, home palliative care, hospital psychiatry, intensive community follow-up and community mental health. She has accompanied people at the end of life, adults living with severe and persistent mental illness, people struggling with addiction, and families turned upside down.
Palliative care marked her deeply. To honour those encounters, she wrote personal condolence letters to families, sharing the trace their loved one had left in her heart and mind.
In short-term psychiatry, assessing other people's mental health meant examining her own. She came away with one certainty:
"We cannot accompany someone further than we ourselves are willing to go."
A vivid dream also shaped her path: in it, she saw herself recognized as a psychologist. A recent change in the law allowed nurses to obtain a psychotherapist permit. She began a master's degree in mental health and psychiatric care at the Université du Québec en Outaouais.
She was offered a place in the first cohort of specialized mental health nurse practitioners. She chose another road, psychotherapy. What called her was not the medical model of prescribing, useful as it is, but the work at the heart of the human bond.
She went on to specialize in sensorimotor psychotherapy and to train in non-ordinary states of consciousness, convinced that these experiences, held with rigour and ethics, can open deep spaces for healing.
Every person carries a capacity for self-healing and an inner wisdom that only need a safe space to emerge.
Johanne has seen it in people living with severe illness that has stabilized, in people at the end of life, in refugees starting over from nothing, in members of the LGBTQIA2+ community rebuilding their identity after rejection. She has also lived it in her own path.
Meeting Johanne in therapy means meeting a woman who continues her own inner work, who keeps learning, questioning herself, writing and searching for meaning. A professional who takes suffering seriously, and takes the human capacity to rise again just as seriously.
Training and credentials
- Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers du Québec
- Member, no. 2090839
- Ordre des psychologues du Québec
- Psychotherapist permit no. 61963-21
- Sensorimotor psychotherapy
- Level 1 and Level 2 training
- TheraPsil
- Advanced training in psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, in progress
- Michener Institute
- Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and holotropic breathwork
- Languages
- French, English and Spanish
An affirming, inclusive practice
Johanne offers an LGBTQIA2+ affirming therapeutic space, attentive to trans realities and to systemic issues. She is particularly committed to working with racialized people and the Latin American diaspora.
Her stance is anti-oppressive and attentive to the effects of systemic trauma, while staying centred on personal responsibility and each person's capacity to act.
Two settings
Alongside her private practice, Johanne works in the public health network with a varied adult clientele. Working in both settings sharpens her clinical rigour.
Starting therapy
Write to me to let me know you are interested. I will reply and, if it helps, suggest a short exploratory call.