RIVERSIDE

Imagine Therapy Solutions – ITS – opened their Riverside location in July 2023 and is off to a jumping start. The 11 therapists and five office staffers work to offer a wide variety of therapies, including Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Play Therapy and more, with offerings for all ages. Additionally, they will work one-on-one with patients, couples and even families.

ITS already had a location in North Liberty, but owner, director and professional therapist Kendra Bailey decided she wanted to open a second location because of ITS’s broad scope.

“Our radius that we serve in North Liberty is so wide, we have people from Des Moines, Davenport, Cedar Rapids,” Bailey said. “But we were having people from Burlington. After long, I started telling people, ‘I’m really feeling this call to go farther south.’ I’m not sure if that’s just in my head, or if that’s actually what God is calling me to do.”

Bailey began looking at potential offices south of North Liberty; she compared the search to that of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

“It was either too large or too small, just not correct. I had actually almost given up. Then, the landlords of this location heard we were looking, and they reached out,” Bailey said. “In hindsight, this was better than everything I was envisioning. We get a lot of referrals from Washington hospitals, clinics and physicians that were coming to North Liberty, and so it just made sense to come [to Riverside].”

What exactly is therapy?

“I like to think of [therapy] as providing a safe space that a person can seek. [It’s] supportive and broadens their village,” Bailey said. “Therapy helps offer them different tools that they perhaps had the whole time, but just didn’t even know how to utilize in their emotional toolbox. Hopefully, they can be able to set objectives for themselves with the therapists, and at the end of that journey, they can feel really good seeing progress or that they’ve met those goals and are able to feel supported on that journey.”

ITS’s therapists spend their time traveling between the North Liberty and Riverside locations to accommodate the needs of the patient. 

For instance, ITS offers Parent-Child Interactive Therapy. This is a form of therapy where the parent and child are left alone in a room while a therapist watches via camera, communicating with Bluetooth to coach the parent. The coaching can help the parents learn how to better respond to outbursts or other needs of the child.

This is only offered in the North Liberty location. However, Bailey stated that patients do not hesitate to make the longer drive for that particular service as it is unique and can be helpful.

Pricing

In America, the cost of mental healthcare can be a deterrent to seeking help. ITS tries to solve this by accepting most forms of insurance, and for those who do not have insurance, offering a sliding scale fee where patients can pay what they feel they can afford based on their annual salary. This ensures that everyone is welcome at ITS.

“We try to make it affordable for everyone. We never want someone to feel like they cannot get the help that they need. We want people to be served,” Bailey said. “Our mission statement is Ephesians 3:20; ‘And to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine, to him be the glory.’”

“We want people to imagine the difference. They’re not just getting one therapist, they’re getting 16 people who care about them and will try to figure out how to get them the services that they need and are looking for, whether that’s here or if we need to look outside of our office walls. We are more than happy to do that,” Bailey said.

Telehealth

ITS offers telehealth, which is a virtual therapy visit utilizing phones or the internet. Each therapist at ITS offers this, making it convenient for a patient to keep seeing their therapist if they move away or are kept home due to a snowstorm, for example.

This was one of the positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bailey stated that they were toying with the idea of telehealth, but when COVID-19 shut down businesses, it forced them to make the change immediately.

“I still remember getting the news of COVID coming to our area. We recognized that we were going to need to provide telehealth services quickly. We hit the ground running, where the shift, truthfully, was almost overnight,” Bailey said. “We never shut our doors. And now we’re grateful that it opened the door for services that we want to believe we would have gotten to eventually, but it just forced us to do that much more quickly and now we can serve that many more people.”

Mental health crisis?

Counseling offices continue to open nationwide as more people reach out for therapy. Meanwhile, many people assume that the increase in the wordage ‘mental health,’ ‘anxiety,’ and ‘depression,’ means that there is a mental health crisis, or an influx of people who are more depressed today than in generations past.

But is today’s society truly experiencing a ‘mental health crisis?’

Professionals such as Bailey point out that there is not an increase in mental health issues. Rather, more attention is being given to it. And now that ‘mental health’ is a widely accepted term, it makes it easier to classify cases.

This creates the mirage of an epidemic.

Generational differences may be a factor as well.  Older people may still believe there is a stigma associated with seeking therapy.

Bailey was happy to share that ITS helps a lot of older folk, stating, “Someone out there is sharing the good news that [we’re] here. And it’s available because people are starting to recognize – whether it’s from their own support systems, their families, their churches, their communities, their doctors – someone is helping them understand that this is a safe, positive experience for them.”

With positive outcomes like this, therapy can continue to become more mainstream, destroying any stigmatism that may yet remain.

“I would encourage people who are taking advantage of the services to keep spreading the word, because I do think the more people are open and honest about how helpful something like this is for them, then another person is able to say, ‘If it works for you, maybe it’ll work for me.’ And it helps normalize therapy even more,” Bailey concluded.

Imagine Therapy Solutions is located at 71 W First St, Riverside, and at 575 Cameron Way A, North Liberty. Call (319) 626-2558 or email office@imaginetherapysolutions.com to learn more about their services and to book an appointment.