Clinical Program Director for Mental Health
Mackenzie Almond, LCMHC
Mackenzie Almond is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Certified Grief Counseling Specialist in North Caroline. Mackenzie received her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel hill and her Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Wake Forest University Graduate School. She received Dialectical Behavior Therapy training through Psychwire in 2019 and has facilitated multiple adult and teen/parent DBT groups as well as full-model individual DBT sessions. Mackenzie has worked in intensive mental health services since 2016. She has extensive experience working with people who experience severe depression, anxiety, personality disorders, grief, existential despair/crisis, suicidality, NSSI (non-suicidal self-injurious behavior), bipolar disorder, and trauma. Mackenzie feels it is most important to meet her clients where they are in the room. Therapy is a collaboration, not a power struggle. She believes her clients have lived expertise and she is here to witness their story, walk or sit with them in it, and when they are ready, guide them through to the other side personalizing skills to their life along the way.
Through specialized training, conferences, and over seven years of working with crises and suicidality, Mackenzie is committed to helping those experiencing emotional despair, distress, and/or suicidality navigate their struggles in an environment of compassion and understanding. She has focused her training on the risk assessment, intervention, and treatment planning of those with passive, active, acute, and chronic suicidality, aiming to help individuals across the entire spectrum of suicidality. Mackenzie volunteers with People Address and Understanding Suicide Experiences (PAUSE), American Association of Suicidology, the International Association for Suicide Prevention, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and provides crisis support for NAMI’s Survivor’s of Suicide Attempts support group (SOSA), amongst other special projects dedicated to driving the suicide prevention and advocacy movement forward. Mackenzie also spends time speaking to other mental health clinicians and graduate programs about how to work with suicidality.