Melissa Tehee, PhD, JD, is an assistant professor at Utah State University in the department of psychology and citizen of the Cherokee Nation working to advance research in trauma in marginalized populations. Tehee’s clinical and research interests address trauma across the life span with a large focus on bias/prejudice/racism, health disparities, domestic violence, and other trauma experienced by ethnic and racial minorities, especially American Indians. Her interdisciplinary training allows her to consider the convergence of these topics with law and policy. She is the director of the American Indian Support Project, a project created to increase the number of American Indian mental health professionals to address mental health issues in American Indian schools.
Tehee earned dual degrees in clinical psychology, policy and law (PhD/JD) with a certificate in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy at the University of Arizona. She completed her predoctoral internship at the University of California San Diego and San Diego VA consortium. Tehee has a master of science in psychology from Western Washington University and a bachelor of arts in psychology from the University of Nebraska.
Tehee is also the director of the Tohi Lab, a multicultural mental health research lab focused on the physical, spiritual and mental health of ethnic and racial minorities, focused on the traditional medicine wheel. The lab emphasizes traditional and culturally appropriate interventions and research methods in the effort to decolonize multicultural research within the field of psychology, aiming to investigate disparities, potential solutions, advance multicultural psychology and disseminate research.