Dr. Meghna Middha earned her ALM in the field of psychology from Harvard Extension School in May 2026, finishing her degree from her home in India, while working full time as an adolescent wellbeing counselor.
Her capstone project on teen mental health has since grown into a book series for teenagers called “Therapist in a Bag,” with two titles already published and the full series set to launch in December.
Middha already had a Ph.D. in gender studies and narrative identity — along with years of experience using theatre, storytelling, narrative, and expressive arts to foster emotional exploration and wellbeing among children in India — when she decided to add a psychology degree to her background.
The decision came into focus during the pandemic, when she found herself trying to support the teenagers in her care through a level of stress and isolation she didn’t have the training to fully address.
What I longed for was the science behind it all,” Middha said. “I understood identity through literature, emotions through stories, and human experience through observation, but something always felt incomplete.
Completing Courses While Working and Raising a Family
Because Harvard Extension School’s live class sessions run on Eastern time, Middha’s coursework mostly happened after midnight for her.
“I often laugh and tell people that I attended the midnight classroom,” she said. “I’d spend the day being a mother, counselor, and mentor. Then sometime around midnight, I’d make myself a cup of tea, open my laptop, and suddenly I was sitting in a classroom with professors and brilliant people from all around the world.”
It wasn’t always easy to sustain. Middha described exhausted nights, early mornings that came too fast, and stretches where she questioned whether or not she could keep managing both a family and a course load. But she said the degree became part of her household’s routine, and her children got to watch their mother go back to school.
“I hope that taught them something important,” she said. “Learning doesn’t belong to one season of life.”
Expanding Her Research Project to a Book Series
The idea behind Middha’s capstone had been building for years before she was a student at Harvard Extension School. She could see that teenagers needed support with emotional regulation before they hit a crisis point. Her capstone gave her the research grounding to build that idea into a structured framework called ABCD: awareness, balance, choice, and direction.
“For years I knew intuitively that stories heal, and that adolescents need spaces where they feel seen,” she said. “What my capstone gave me was the scientific foundation to understand those things better.”
Middha built the framework into a series of books aimed directly at teenagers. Each one follows characters working through a specific emotion using the four ABCD steps, along with exercises she developed during her pre-capstone and capstone research. The series title, “Therapist in a Bag,” came from the idea that emotional support should be as easy for a teenager to reach for as something they already carry in their backpack.
“A teenager who may never pick up an academic paper will discover emotional vocabulary, self-awareness, and hope through a story,” Middha said.
Feedback from classmates in her program, spread across different countries and time zones, shaped the framework as she developed it.
“Learning wasn’t just confined to campus,” she added.
Harvard Extension School Dean Nancy Coleman and Dean of Academic Programs Suzanne Spreadbury celebrate Meghna Middha’s book series.
Commencement in Cambridge
Middha traveled to Cambridge in May for Harvard’s Commencement, marking the completion of a degree she pursued primarily abroad, complemented by on-campus study at Harvard Extension School in the U.S.
People often imagine that earning a Harvard degree is about arriving somewhere,” she said. “For me, it felt more like coming home, not because Harvard changed who I was, but because it helped me understand who I had been becoming all along.
While crossing the stage, she thought about the assignments she’d written after her children had gone to bed and the classmates who had cheered her on from around the world.
“It reminds me that dreams don’t expire because life becomes busy,” she said. “They simply wait for the right season.”
What’s Next After Harvard Extension School
Middha continues to work as an adolescent wellbeing counselor in India and recently started a platform called “Dr. M’s Safe Space,” where she writes about her work with teenagers. She’s also looking into additional doctoral programs to build a stronger research base under the ABCD framework.
“I intend to pursue another Ph.D.,” she said. “This time, I want to develop more research-backed skills for each part of the ABCD model, so we could establish it in academia.”
Looking back at her time at Harvard Extension School, Middha said a comment from Dean Nancy Coleman stuck with her more than almost anything else from the program.
“She told me that the Extension School finds you when you’re ready,” Middha said. “I will never forget that.”
