Today we’d like to introduce you to Macarena Corral.
Hi Macarena, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Nicole (Dr. Nicole Slavik, PsyD, LP) and I (Dr. Macarena Corral, PsyD, LP) met while we were both supervisors at a community mental health center. We didn’t know each other well, but we had a strong admiration for each other’s work ethic and product.
In the fall of 2015, Nicole and I sat in a small neighborhood restaurant discussing our vision for what ideal psychological care could look like and how this could be made available to people in our community. Macarena had recently had her first child and was looking to make a change in her career. She had always dreamed and talked about starting her own business and was feeling ready for a change.
As we talked that day, it became clear that we shared the same values and desire to provide a unique space where clients could be empowered to live healthier lives through traditional therapy alongside other complementary practices. Wellness and health look different for everyone. We believe, however, that by taking a patient-centered, integrative approach to health, we can address the whole person by considering all factors that affect health and wellness from an emotional, physical, and nutritional perspective. By combining traditional mental health therapies with complementary treatments we can take advantage of all appropriate therapeutic strategies to reach optimal wellness and healing.
We decided that day that we would work together to create a clinic that would embody our values, our hope for clients, and our wish to build a safe and empowering environment for clients and staff alike.
Coming up with the idea for the clinic was the easy part of course. Less than a month later, we opened a bank account together and signed our business contract. That was the fall of 2015 and after a lot of hard work from us and our generous friends and family, we opened our doors in March 2016.
We started just Nicole and I, using our connections in the community to grow the therapy and assessment side of the clinic. After a few months, we added another mental health provider and by 2019, we were moving into a bigger space and adding more therapists along the way. In 2020, as we adjusted to personal and professional changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided to fulfill the dream of becoming an integrative mental health clinic. We expanded our space once again and added new services including acupuncture, medication management, and nutrition counseling.
Currently, we have 11 mental health providers, and 5 wellness providers, all of whom embody our same vision and dedication to the community. They are skilled, knowledgeable, and some of the strongest women we know.
We have continued to grow since we opened our doors and 2023 will be no different. We are expanding our space yet again (4th construction in 7 years!) and adding new providers and services (massage, health coaching, strength training, and yoga).
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Owning a business is not for the faint of heart! And being a women-owned business has come with its own challenges.
While our road has been relatively smooth despite some natural bumps in the road, we were not expecting a global pandemic. Our main struggle has been and continues to be how to adapt to the changes in the field of psychology because of the COVID-19 pandemic and other community events. The pandemic increased awareness of mental health and with that came significant demand for our services. We have of course adjusted by adding providers but sometimes the need is more than we have available which is always a struggle as we want to be there for the community and do not want anyone to be without care.
Another interesting change with the pandemic was moving our services to a virtual platform. While we were able to do that without much difficulty at first, there have been technological difficulties along the way that has also impacted our ability to provide services. Despite our entire team being back in the office now at least part-time, we continue to offer teletherapy services and so comes the added challenge to develop and manage a hybrid practice.
Overall, it has been a difficult yet rewarding journey so far. We have been able to see the considerable, impactful benefits of our work with clients, which is more than we could have ever imagined and hoped for. But along the way, we have also built a community of multidisciplinary providers that are supportive of each other, enjoy working together and take the time to collaborate to make our work even better.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about the Center for Collaborative Health?
The Center for Collaborative Health is a multidisciplinary mental health clinic (private practice) in Edina, Minnesota.
At CCH, we believe that every person is resilient and has the strength to grow and thrive. We also strongly believe that change occurs most quickly and is most effective when treatment strategies are targeted toward healing the whole person. For this reason, we employ a collaborative whole-body approach to healing that leads to proven positive change. We provide, to adults, teens, and children, a wide range of services from individual, couples, family, and group therapy and psychological assessments, to adjunct treatments including medication management/psychiatry, nutrition counseling, acupuncture, massage therapy, and movement therapy.
We do not want to define what health and wellness are for each client. Instead, we meet clients where they are and empower them to define wellness for themselves, and help them get where they want to be with the tools and education at our disposal.
We do not want clients to encounter any barriers to accessing the services that they need which is why we wanted to create a space where they would have all the providers under one roof and work collaboratively with each other to ensure proper coordination of care.
We approach our work with a trauma lens, meaning that most of our staff have been well-trained in the assessment and treatment of trauma. However, we are also a generalist clinic and will treat all concerns that are presented to us.
And if we cannot, we help clients find other services in the community. At CCH, we are also actively reimagining mental health culture by providing services that not only treat current problems but also give clients tools to better withstand future challenges. We do not want people to seek help only when they are in crisis. Our clients do not have to be currently seeing a therapist or a psychiatrist to access our wellness services. On the contrary, we want them to utilize our services in times when they are doing well, as a preventative measure.
Finally, one thing that sets us apart from other agencies is our commitment to diversity and non-discrimination. I was born and raised in Madrid, Spain. As such, my first language is Spanish. For this reason, I sought to be able to provide a space where Spanish-speaking clients could receive services in their native language. We have 5 bilingual providers on staff and therefore can provide several of our services in Spanish. I truly believe that this makes a significant impact on treatment progress and rapport building when a client feels comfortable expressing themselves in their native language with a person that can understand them and their culture. In addition, we have a strong passion for helping the immigrant community, regardless of native language, and several of our staff assist clients in immigration proceedings.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Whenever I talk about CCH, what people are most surprised about is that Nicole and I have built this clinic from the ground up, with no financial backing other than our own savings, and no administrative support. We started with just the two of us and continue to grow with the need of the community.
To this day, we still do not have any administrative help. Nicole and I share responsibilities including IT, billing, marketing, etc. In addition, we still maintain a clinical caseload. We truly believe that our clinic is better run because we are still doing clinical work which allows us to be aware of what is happening in the community and what clients may be needing which informs the way that we run the clinic, the services that we offer, and the ability to provide better support to our team.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.centerforcollaborativehealth.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/centercollaborativehealth/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/centerforcollaborativehealth/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl7R06F3ZQKVBVTi-mryMwA
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/center-for-collaborative-health/
Image Credits
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