Caya Counseling Services Inc.

Maxwell Sears is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) who serves as Executive Director/CEO of CAYA Counseling Services, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit full-service mental health and counseling agency whose primary office is in Stockbridge, Georgia. CAYA’s aim is to help to break the stigma of mental health in our communities by giving those who are suffering in silence a voice. 

CAYA works with people of all ages, races, religions, national origins, and creeds because mental illness has no such boundaries. The challenge of mental illness is that no-one believes it exists until it has happened to them or it has hit close to home. People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care…and CAYA cares! 

Maxwell Sears is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) who serves as Executive Director/CEO of CAYA Counseling Services, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit full-service mental health and counseling agency whose primary office is in Stockbridge, Georgia. CAYA’s aim is to help to break the stigma of mental health in our communities by giving those who are suffering in silence a voice. 

CAYA works with people of all ages, races, religions, national origins, and creeds because mental illness has no such boundaries. The challenge of mental illness is that no-one believes it exists until it has happened to them or it has hit close to home. People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care…and CAYA cares! 

Prior to establishing CAYA Counseling Services, Inc. in 2013, Mr. Sears spent over twenty-five years in the behavioral health field, working with several agencies in New York City and Georgia including the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), churches, and nonprofit agencies. His primary focus was, and continues to be, helping the brokenhearted, the left out, and the left behind. 

Mr. Sears, by way of CAYA, works intently with men and women, helping them to recognize that their feelings matter because as humans, we think, we feel and then we act. He believes in meeting people where they are by giving them an opportunity to deal with childhood hurts and by providing the forum to express those feelings openly and honestly in a safe, nonjudgmental environment. CAYA is built on the principle that there is greatness in every human; mental illness can rob and change a person’s perspective from greatness to illness. He reminds his clients that they are not to make their past greater than their future. Mr. Sears passionately believes that there are no hopeless persons in the world, just hopeless situations that can be changed; change is not considered to change until the affected person has changed. 

Mr. Sears earned his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Hunter College (New York), Master of Arts in Professional Counseling from Liberty University (Virginia), and is currently pursuing his PhD in Cognitive Behavior at Grand Canyon University (Arizona). An active member of the community, Mr. Sears sits on the Dekalb County Fatherhood Initiative panel, among others and is considered a wellrespected and much sought-after expert in his field. 

Mr. Sears comes highly qualified to address the pain of mental illness in our community because he has put the time into working and helping people who do not have a voice from childhood. Now they have an advocate in CAYA Counseling Services, Inc. “where you will never be the same or shamed”.