UMass Boston

In a world where accessibility to quality mental health care remains a challenge, one dedicated clinician is setting her sights on a broader vision for the future.

For Laura Morizio G’19, PhD’21, the decision to pursue a career in psychology stemmed from a desire to work with children while promoting accessibility to mental health care and removing financial barriers often associated with such services.

Now she’s doing just that through her private practice, Coast Psychology.

Opening an independent clinic was not always Morizio’s end goal—that dream would not take shape until years later. When she enrolled in UMass Boston’s School Psychology MEd/PhD program, she did so “with an open mind” — that, and the knowledge that the university’s social justice mission aligned with what she envisioned for herself as a mental health practitioner.

“Social justice really lays the groundwork for why we do what we do as psychologists. And to me, it felt like an inextricable part of my identity and of who I wanted to be as a clinician,” said Morizio. She added that she also valued the university’s connection to the community, specifically with Boston Public Schools, local community mental health centers, and the Walter Denney Youth Center of the Boys and Girls Club. “[UMass Boston] really stuck to that promise and continually evolved in its emphasis on social justice.”

Even after graduating, she stayed connected with the university, taking on an associate lecturer role with the Department of Counseling and School Psychology. Morizio said this position afforded her the unique opportunity of teaching material that she herself had studied just a few years prior.

“I knew the ins and outs of the courses [my students] were taking, the professors they were working with. It felt really good to be able to say, ‘Hey, I'm on the other side, and it’ll be over soon, so enjoy the time now,’” said Morizio. “It also allowed me to re-engage with the course content in a totally different way. I learned a lot from my students, because they had a new way of looking at things for the material I hadn’t looked at in a few years.”

But outside the university’s walls, Morizio was being exposed to a different side of the healthcare sector—one that, while extremely rewarding, was also frustrating.

While working as an educational psychologist, she was tasked with bridging the gap between assessments and interventions. Morizio said she found it increasingly difficult to work within a system that felt under-equipped to meet the mental health needs of all its students, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only that, she said, but necessary interventions and recommendations for students were difficult to apply in a school-based setting with limited support.

“In the field, we were working with the same level of support we had been working with since before the pandemic, but the level of need had seriously escalated, so there was suddenly a mismatch there. That was hard for me, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for teachers or others in the school community who are responsible for implementing those interventions every day on top of carrying the responsibilities of lesson planning and teaching effectively,” she explained.

Morizio also started noticing a pattern in her school community: children who came from more privileged backgrounds were able to obtain needed, high-quality private assessments more readily. Children whose families relied on insurance often found themselves on a lengthy waitlist, further delaying assessment that would be crucial in diagnosing a learning or behavioral difference and, thus, appropriate intervention.

She further illustrated this disparity with an example: “Let’s say you’re a first-semester college student with an undiagnosed reading condition, and you’ve never received help for it. You need an assessment, but you don't have any money because you’re a college student. And then you're waiting six months for someone to tell you that you have dyslexia and need reading support. But at that point, you’ve had a whole first semester of classes that you’ve probably struggled through. So, your quality of life is reduced when you have to wait. It delays the help that you need. I knew that there had to be a way to solve that problem within my community.”

In April 2023, she came up with a way to directly address this lack of accessibility: open a fee-for-service practice that accepts clients based on a sliding scale. Based in Glen Cove, NY, Coast Psychology’s mission is to expediate the psychological evaluation and treatment of its clients—particularly for children, teens, and adolescents.

“My goal is to try to be understanding and provide services to people who need it based on whatever financial commitment they’re able to make at that time. The assessments I do are mostly provided in person, but I also provide virtual assessments. It really depends on the referral concern,” said Morizio.

Despite her practice being less than a year old, Morizio is already making significant strides. Since the clinic’s inception, she has been actively building her clientele and incorporated a pro bono component to assist those who cannot afford such help. She also offers consulting services, partnering with school districts and other community organizations to implement evidence-based practices in social-emotional learning, conduct applied research, and data-driven program evaluations and offers professional development for educators to help build more inclusive school communities.

Additionally, she hopes to expand the practice by hiring more clinicians, ensuring that the needs of individuals across the state are met without the lengthy waitlist, regardless of their proximity to the clinic.

But her vision doesn’t stop with the growth of Coast Psychology. Morizio said she ultimately hopes to see a paradigm shift in health care, especially in the pediatric setting.

“I would love to see continued growth of the assessments that I do—to identify conditions like learning disabilities, ADHD, or autism—become more integrated into primary care settings. It makes that kind of access easier from a procedural standpoint,” she said, explaining that such integration would make accessing necessary psychological assessments and mental health services as straightforward as seeking medical care for a physical ailment.

Above all else, Morizio advises aspiring and current clinicians to become involved in their communities, emphasizing the role it plays in discerning where their help is most needed.

“Friendships and community partnerships are a really beautiful thing and help directly where you might be most helpful,” said Morizio. “When you listen to your community, I think you can be a better clinician by just trying to provide what they’re telling you that they need. So that you can help a little bit more honestly, indirectly, in that way.”