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Our Story

Paperflower Institute has been a pipe-dream for quite awhile.  Maria has always been passionate about teaching mental health concepts in a way that people can easily grasp.  After she was unable to teach in her nursing professor role full-time, she moved to teaching on TikTok, gaining tens of thousands of followers.  She always dreamed of offering an accessible platform for the public, professional development courses for health professionals and support tools for new psychiatric mental health graduates.  Gillian joined our team, offering expertise with a background in teaching and psychology. 

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This is our effort to dismantle gatekeeping for the public and to offer quality education to our profession.

Meet Our Team

Our team at Paperflower Institute is committed to providing quality, specialized education.  We work to provide resources that you can't find anywhere else for clinicians and allied health professionals and to ensure the public have access to free education resources.

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You shouldn't need to spend hours googling this.  We're just gonna put it all here. 

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Founder, Psych NP + Educator

Dr. Maria Ingalla, DNP, PMHNPBC 

Maria is a psychiatric nurse practitioner who is experienced in child/adolescent, perinatal, and general adult mental health. She has worked as a professor at several higher education institutions and as a consultant to healthcare providers nationally.  She currently runs Paperflower Psychiatry in Arizona.  

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Psychologist + Educator

Gillian Ilagan, RPsy, MGARC

Gillian is a registered psychologist in the Philipphines with a specialty in Global Addiction Counseling & Rehabilitation. She has worked as an educator, a case manager in a rehab center and a psychologist providing mental health first aid to survivors of war trauma. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our team.

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Graphic Design + Beautying

Zerry Ramirez

Zerry is our social media manager at Paperflower Psychiatry, and also provides us with graphic design at Paperflower Institute.  Somehow being self taught, she still managed to learn and become awesome at all of it. She works alongside Gillian to bring life to our videos, learning modules + education content. 

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