About Dr. Hughey

Leia Hughey, Ph.D., is the descendant of people with a pioneering spirit. Her paternal great grandparents immigrated from Sweden. Her great grandparents on both branches of the family tree braved the hardships of the Oregon trail to start new lives in the Pacific Northwest. Although Leia never knew her ancestors that came before her grandparents, she does credit them and her parents for modeling tenacity and courage as a necessity for living life well. Life is difficult. Leia learned about sickness and death at a young age when a beloved sister became ill and died from cancer. Leia was seven years old at the time. Her father worked two jobs while running a small family farm to keep food on the table for the family. Her mother struggled with irrational emotional outbursts throughout her life and Leia watched the family try to cope and adjust to instability. Periods of relative calm were followed by eruptions of chaos. In this soil, Leia learned resilience. She learned compassion and forgiveness as methods for surviving uncertainty and adversity. Leia had many struggles of her own through teenage and young adult years, following her peers into self-destructive behaviors for a time. She learned a phrase from a 12-step group that she attended as a young adult while trying to find her way back to a life of meaning. Do the next right thing. This became the yardstick by which she measured her actions in each uncertain circumstance. When in doubt do the next right thing.

Dr. Hughey is the youngest of six children and the only child in her immediate family to have earned a graduate degree. She graduated from Georgia State University with her doctorate in 1987. She has practiced as both a private practitioner and in community agencies through most of her adult career. Dr. Hughey and her husband, Raymond Hughey own and practice in a semi-rural full-service clinic named Country Counseling, LLC. They work with people of all ages and they offer treatment for addictions and a wide range of mental health challenges.