First founded in the Mountlake Terrace area in 2011 by husband-and-wife team Derek and Jessica Crain, Mindful Therapy Group just last month opened their seventh location in Vancouver at 7600 NE 41st St., in Vancouver.
“We had heard for a long time that the Vancouver area was looking for more mental health services,” Derek said. “We’ve been interested for a long time in getting down there.”
When Derek and Jessica first decided to start Mindful Therapy Group in 2011, Derek said that he saw from his own private practice that there was need to start something with a group of providers that could help deal with the mental health shortage that was already apparent then in 2011. Derek and Jessica “had a vision of uniting like-minded mental healthcare specialists to serve the Seattle area with compassion, experience and a fresh outlook on mental wellness,” according to the Mindful Therapy Group website.
Derek said that the organization now has 600 providers throughout all of their offices and through telehealth, and he said they are continuing to grow rapidly. The 5,547-square-foot Vancouver office includes 19 therapy offices and a conference room, break room and work room. Nick Norman, business relationship manager for Mindful Therapy Group, said the Vancouver office has the potential to cap out at 40-50 providers once the office is completely full. He said a lot of the providers are continuing to do a mixture of telehealth and in-person visits, something that became common during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We really encourage our practitioners to practice themselves,” Norman said. “We partner together to help them practice according to their interests, help manage technology and insurance billing. And it gives people greater access to that care.”
Derek said that something else unique about Mindful’s model is that they have 100 nurse practitioners on board, and patients can usually get in to see one within seven days.
“Our company has always been about providing quality mental health care and accessible mental health care,” Derek said. “It’s a unique model to have so many nurse practitioners.”
Derek also emphasized that all of the Mindful Therapy Group offices are “not your typical sterile-looking offices.” Jessica does all of the design for the offices and Derek said their goal is to make a safe, inviting space where patients feel good, comfortable and normal.
“The waiting room is beautiful,” Derek said, referring to the Vancouver office. “It’s warm, there’s an area for kids to draw and color, there’s children’s books. We have rooms big enough for family therapy, a lot of space for the nurse practitioners to come there and help with medication management. It’s cozy and has a community feeling.”
Derek said he is especially excited about being able to provide a physical space for children to be able to go to. He said that doing telehealth mental health services with children during the pandemic has been especially difficult because they lose out on that physical space and they lose out on some of the privacy and anonymity.
“Children have been much more difficult to help with mental health through the pandemic because they really say a lot with body language, etc.,” Norman said. “Families with young kids (needing mental health services) were hit hard.”
This month, Derek said Mindful Therapy Group opened another office in the Tigard area. They are also in the process of purchasing a building in the Belmont area of Portland, with plans to revitalize the building and open that location at the beginning of 2023.
“Jessica and I, we own the business, we own it outright,” Derek said. “We’re passionate about health care and we love what we do. It’s not a business for us. It’s fun, it’s challenging and we have an amazing team that makes this all happen.”
