Research Interests

Nature, Psychoanalysis, Multiple Ways of Knowing, Community Based Healing, Latine Mental Health, Refugee and Asylee Mental Health, Public Mental Health, Culture

Biography

“The Elementalist” Lazzuly Mello, M.A., is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and Associate Professor of Community Mental Health at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She has been working with Latine communities for over a decade bridging psychodynamic theory with indigenous ways of knowing and healing. She has led groups with unaccompanied minors working through complex trauma and PTSD using medicinal drumming and herbalism to reconnect them to their ancestral ways of knowing. Additionally, Lazzuly has participated in crisis relief work for migrant families fleeing fires in Napa by offering herbal crisis support in the form of tea and aromatherapy. She is particularly interested in using metaphors and medicines that are culturally congruent with migrant peoples. She has experience supporting undocumented people with U-Visa letters as well as providing psychological evaluations to asylee seekers from Central America. In her free time she organizes with her community around bicis, travels ardently, is passionate about cycling, healing, Brazilian futbol and pursuing joy.

Education

M.A. Counseling Psychology, focus on Community Mental Health, California Institute of Integral Studies

B.S. International Agricultural Development and Soil Science, UC Davis

Awards & Distinctions

President's Service Distinction Award, 2022

Courses

Community Health and Trauma

Psychodynamics

Group Psychotherapy

Psychopathology 

Publications

Canty, J.M. (2015). Locality to nonlocality: Transpersonal dimensions of home. World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 71(3-4), pp. 76-85.