Celebrating One Year in Spokane

By Krista Kubiak Crotty, CEDS, LMFT, PsyD, and The Emily Program – Spokane Site Manager

Last June we excitedly opened the doors to The Emily Program – Spokane. On the first day, we gathered in the entryway of the building and walked into the office together. One team. United by a passion for helping individuals recover from eating disorders. One year ago there were 8 staff, 6 clinical and 2 administrative. Today there are 22. Still united, and more passionate than ever to help individuals find recovery.

The community, our clients, and the overall togetherness we have as a staff fuel our energy and passion to help people live whole, healthy lives. This past year has been challenging, fun, and most of all, rewarding.

We started our journey with a handful of services – intake assessments, individual therapy, nutritional counseling, and Intensive Outpatient Programs (PHP/IOP). Since then we’ve expanded our eating disorder treatment services to include a comprehensive, full spectrum of outpatient care. Founder Dirk Miller, often says, “We live our lives as ‘outpatients’” and understands that most change will happen when we “apply what’s learned in treatment to a life of recovery that we live outside the treatment program.”

To that end, we are thrilled to offer clients individualized treatment plans as we always have, but now with a wider array of services. We are delighted to help adolescents and adults; those who struggle with anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, or related mental health illnesses. Now, a year later, treatment might include a mix of individual therapy, group therapy, Family-Based Treatment (FBT), nutritional evaluation and counseling, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient programs, or psychiatric and medical services. It’s a proud moment to be able to help people in every aspect of their mental and physical well-being.

Research suggests that a strong support system is crucial to helping a support person and their loved one through this journey, in the fall we (re)started a free family and friends support group. Support people, please come join us—we meet the first and third Thursday of each month and welcome anyone who is a support person to someone struggling with an eating disorder. This is an open invitation to anyone in the community who is a support person.

Getting to know peers in our community has been a great pleasure. Our staff loves connecting with other professionals and talking about research, trends, and other ‘hot’ topics in the field of eating disorders. This past March we started hosting a professionals Journal Club. We enjoy getting together with professionals throughout the community to share our thoughts and ideas around specific eating disorder topics. We look forward to kicking off a new season of topics in September. Please join our mailing list so we can digitally inform you of these happenings!

It’s been a great year! Celebrating our one-year birthday has given us time to reflect on all the moments and changes we’ve experienced in the past twelve months. And the part we are so proud and excited about is our clients. They are some of the most intelligent, strong, courageous people we’ve ever met. And we feel so honored to be part of their lives. Our clients teach us and challenge us; probably just as much as we teach and challenge them. It’s a joy to work with clients and colleagues in such a warm and friendly community. Cheers to one year, Spokane! A big thank you to everyone who has embraced us and shared some of these moments with us. We look forward to sharing many more memories with each of you.