Munyi Shea

Munyi Shea, Ph.D., is a counseling psychologist by training. Her work seeks to advance culturally informed mental health education, prevention, and intervention to expand access to care and address persistent mental health disparities among underserved and marginalized populations, including ethnically minoritized, immigrant, and displaced communities.

For nearly two decades, Dr. Shea has examined how cultural and structural factors shape psychological distress, help-seeking behavior, and perceived barriers to care. In collaboration with colleagues and community partners, she translates these insights into culturally grounded and strengths-focused programs that are self-guided, peer-led, or community-based, with implementation across school and community settings.

Dr. Shea brings substantial experience in higher education, including teaching, mentoring, and doctoral program leadership. She has contributed to the development and evaluation of multiple preventive interventions, including bullying prevention programs for Asian/Pacific Islander and Latinx youth, a cognitive-behavioral guided self-help intervention for Latinas with eating disorders, and a peer-led support model for college-going mothers. Her translational work also includes the development and validation of psychological measures, including the Barriers to Seeking Mental Health Counseling scale (Shea et al., 2019), which has been translated and validated internationally.

Her contributions to scholarship on race, ethnicity, and Asian American psychology have been recognized with national awards from the American Psychological Association, the Asian American Psychological Association, and the American Educational Research Association.

Prior to joining Yale, Dr. Shea served as a tenured Professor of Clinical Psychology and Counselor Education, as well as Director of Doctoral Programs in Education, at Seattle Pacific University.