Mia Garcia

Mia Garcia received a bachelor of science from BYU-Idaho and her Master of Arts in Counseling from Wake Forest University. She is currently a second-year doctoral student in the Counselor Education and Supervision program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Mia is a Professional School Counselor, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Associate in North Carolina, and a National Certified Counselor (NCC). She is a current recipient of the 23′ NBCC doctoral minority fellowship, and is the Southern Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (SCAES) Graduate Student Representative. Mia’s clinical interest involves trauma-informed child-centered play therapy and identity and role development. She has experience providing mental health services and education to at-risk children in Title 1 schools, Nepal, and Uganda. Her professional identity is strongly tied to advocating for historically marginalized children who have experienced trauma, while increasing the accessibility of culturally affirming research-based practices.

Mia is currently working on developing a new model for identifying suicidal risk and behavior in elementary-aged children. Her research focuses on creating new tools to help mental health clinicians and school counselors better identify suicidality in children ages 4–11, and counselor education support of Latine individuals. She is interested in researching and developing training for counselors to better support immigrant children and English language learners through a non-westernized lens.