Logan Mental Health and Wellness will be holding a ribbon cutting ceremony for their new clinic at 1638 North 200 West in Logan on Friday, July 15, 2022
LOGAN – After many years of giving service to infants and their parents in Neonatal Intensive Care Units, plus having a family member struggle with mental healthcare, Paige Barnard made a career change and went back to school. She became certified and licensed as a Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, teamed up with Ani Eccles (who is also a Mental Health Nurse Practitioner) and created Logan Mental Health and Wellness, which will be holding a ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday, July 15th. The clinic is located at 1638 North 200 West in Logan.
“We’ll have tours of the building and we’ll have all our providers here,” Barnard explains. “We’re super excited; we just completed an almost-year long remodel of the building. We’re excited to show all the hard work that’s been done and let everyone meet our providers and see what we offer.”
Besides meeting the variety of practitioners in the clinic, attendees will also be able to meet the Logan Mental Health and Wellness mascot: Roman the therapy dog.
“He’s a favorite of the clinic and greets our patients,” Barnard says with a smile. “People are usually more excited to see Roman than they are their provider.”
Roman is a mixed breed of mini poodle, mini pinscher and mini pug.
Besides its own in-house therapy dog, the clinic offers a unique blend of specialists to help people of all ages with their mental health and wellness.
“What I think makes us unique and different from other practices throughout the valley is that we work together as a team,” says Barnard. “We’re a clinic, not just individual providers renting space. With that there is a team approach where we collaborate with each other and share cases.
“The patients (are) really benefitting from that because they are getting more collaboration between their providers. If they are seeing their therapist here and medication provider, then we collaborate. We’re in the same building, we can talk so if we see something that would be important for the other person to know we can communicate that information.”
The clinic provides counseling, therapy and medication. Barnard says the clinic focuses on the root cause of someone’s difficulties, which may not, in fact, require medication. It could be related to a client’s genetics, diet, or other factors that don’t require medication. She says their guiding principal in regards to medications is to start low and go slow.
Barnard typically works with clients who are between the ages of 5-30, while Eccles typically works with clients who are over 30 years-old. Besides Barnard and Eccles, Logan Mental Health and Wellness employs Dietician Rachel Hood and multiple therapists, including Lee Williams (LCSW, MPA, SUDC), Amy Bowen (ACHMHC), Megan Lundskog (LCSW, MSW, CSW) and Larry Jacobson (LPC, CHMC).
“We treat anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, some of the more serious mental illnesses (like) schizophrenia,” Barnard adds. “Also a lot of trauma; that’s something we see a lot of. Life is hard and people have a lot of traumatic experiences that cause interruptions in their lives and make it difficult. That’s something that we focus on as well.”
Additionally, the clinic has a lot of experience and expertise treating a variety of eating disorders.
“We really focus on listening to our patients because that’s the thing they need the most,” Barnard adds, “to feel like they’ve been heard, that their concerns have been heard and that they are a part of the process.”
More information about the clinic can be found at loganmhw.org.