About Neesa Sunar

Neesa Sunar (she/her) is a clinical mental health therapist, who has additional expertise as a classical violist and violin/viola educator. She is also a freelance writer of articles, and writes on topics related to mental health and neurodiversity, and the need for systemic advocacy and widespread awareness on both. She has articles published on Psyche, VICE, HuffPost, Mad In America, The Mighty, Ravishly, Greatist, The Establishment, and many other websites. Most recently, Neesa has written on mental health topics within music, and has had articles featured in The Strad. She also is a freelance grantwriter, and has written grants which have successfully funded musical performances and non-profit operations.

A native of Bayside, Queens, NY, Neesa first earned her bachelors degree in music performance from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where she studied with Yuval Gotlibovich, Atar Arad and Mimi Zweig, and also completed baroque performance studies with Stanley Ritchie. Following conservatory, she began acquiring experience as a music educator, both with one-one-one instruction and classroom teaching. She completed post-bachelors coursework at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, and completed two levels of Kodály music educator training at the NYU Kodály Institute. Amidst her steps towards a musical career, in both youth and adulthood, Neesa experienced mental illness herself, which limited her ability to move forward into long-term professional musical work. 

In 2014, Neesa switched her professional focus to mental health. She completed comprehensive training at Howie the Harp Advocacy Center in Harlem, NYC, where she studied recovery-oriented peer support methods; many lecturers brought experience in community organizing for Mad Rights, some dating as far back as the late-1960s amidst other civil rights stirrings of the time. Neesa then worked as a peer specialist at Transitional Services for New York, working in the mental health public housing sector in Eastern Queens. By adopting peer work and mental health advocacy as a lifestyle, she improved tremendously in her own well-being. This included active participation in peer stakeholder committees within the NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Health Hygiene (DOHMH), as well as taking to social media to bring peer support online. In 2015, Neesa founded a peer wellness group on Facebook, called What is Wellness? A Mental Health Discussion Group; the group is still active today with over 2.3k members. Passionate about progressive mental health, Neesa earned her masters in social work degree (MSW) from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. Neesa now offers therapy services via telehealth, and is employed by BCS Group, a private practice based in Brooklyn, NY.

Neesa aspires to bring her mental health expertise to the classical music profession, helping to devise new solutions that can improve the mental health of musicians. Being a musician herself, she understands the specific mental health needs of musicians

Photo credit: Credit Anna Kolchina at Fountain House NYC