Five Years of The Current: Growing, Changing, and Riding the Waves Together
Five years. More than 600 clients served. 19 therapists and students trained in the specialization of eating disorders. 42 clients served through our RO-DBT program. 10 practicum and internship students welcomed into our doors.
And somehow, it still feels like we are just getting started.
This year, The Current Therapy Services is celebrating five years of providing specialized, compassionate mental health care to the Columbia, Missouri community and clients throughout the state.
Five years ago, The Current began with a simple but important idea: people struggling with eating disorders and other complex mental health concerns deserve compassionate, specialized, and effective treatment from highly trained therapists.
Since then, The Current has grown from a small practice centered around providing a comprehensive DBT program and eating disorder treatment into a multidisciplinary outpatient group practice offering specialized care for eating disorders and related issues across the lifespan.
Our story has been one of growth, change, learning, unexpected turns, and, most importantly, connection.
From a Community DBT Program to a Specialized Group Practice
The Current Therapy Services was formed in August 2021 through a collaboration between Kelsey Esser, Carmen Buis, and Melanie Ramos Green with the goal of sustaining a community DBT program with a particular focus on eating disorder treatment. Our first employee, Megan Bogue, joined the practice that November.
What began as a small team quickly became an opportunity to build something bigger.
Over the next several years, we continued developing our clinical expertise, welcoming new therapists and students, expanding our physical space, and exploring what it meant to provide truly specialized outpatient treatment.
In 2022, we focused on expanding our programs and beginning our journey into Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT) in order to more effectively meet the treatment needs of our clients with eating disorders, with that comprehensive program launching in 2023.
Then came 2024: the year of growth. Our team doubled in size, our physical space grew, and our RO-DBT program expanded to accommodate two classes. By 2025, we were dreaming about what expansion could look like next. And in 2026, we embraced another season of change as we formally launched our Child & Adolescent Clinic and continued developing the systems and team needed to support the next chapter of The Current.
Five years later, we are proud of how far we have come—and even more excited about where we are going.
Specialized Treatment for Eating Disorders
Eating disorder treatment has been at the heart of The Current since the beginning.
Today, our team provides specialized treatment for individuals of all ages experiencing anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, ARFID, atypical anorexia, disordered eating, chronic dieting, and body image concerns.
We believe eating disorders are complex mental health conditions that require more than generic therapy. Our therapists receive specialized training in eating disorder treatment and work collaboratively to address the thoughts, emotions, behaviors, relationships, and underlying patterns that can maintain an eating disorder.
Our clinical training includes approaches such as:
Enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT-E)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for ARFID (CBT-AR)
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
Radically Open Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (RO-DBT)
Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT)
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Play Therapy
Trauma-informed approaches
Exposure-based interventions
Our goal is not simply symptom reduction. We want our clients to develop the flexibility, connection, and skills necessary to build a life that is worth authentically living and sharing.
The Growth of RO-DBT at The Current
One of the most significant developments in our five-year story has been our investment in Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT).
RO-DBT has become an important part of our work with individuals who experience patterns of overcontrol, including perfectionism, rigid or rule-based behaviors, people-pleasing, emotional inhibition, difficulty with vulnerability, and challenges with connection. These patterns can intersect with eating disorders, OCD, anxiety, trauma, depression, suicidality, and other mental health concerns.
Since its development in June of 2023, the program has served 42 clients and successfully graduated (completion of the 30 week comprehensive program) over 50% of clients ever enrolled.
Our comprehensive RO-DBT programming includes individual therapy, skills classes, and coaching designed to help clients increase flexibility, openness, and meaningful connection.
For us, RO-DBT isn't simply another treatment modality. It has become part of the way we understand many of the clients we serve—and the way we help people move from simply functioning to genuinely living.
Expanding Care for Children, Adolescents, and Families
One of the most exciting parts of our fifth year has been the continued development of our Child & Adolescent Clinic.
Eating disorders, anxiety, trauma, perfectionism, body image concerns, and emotional regulation difficulties present differently in children and adolescents and they deserve early intervention that provides specialized, developmentally appropriate care.
Our Child & Adolescent Clinic provides therapy for children, teens, and families experiencing concerns including eating disorders, disordered eating, body image struggles, anxiety, depression, trauma, suicidal or self-injurious behaviors, perfectionism, academic stress, self-esteem concerns, and family communication difficulties.
Our clinicians use approaches such as Play Therapy, Internal Family Systems, RO-DBT, DBT, and eating disorder-specific treatments while working collaboratively with parents and caregivers.
The goal is simple: help kids develop the skills, confidence, and connection they need to ride the waves of life.
A Team with Many Areas of Expertise
One of the greatest strengths of The Current is that we are not a practice where every therapist does the same thing. We all share a commitment to specialized eating disorder treatment, while each member of our team brings unique clinical interests and expertise. Over the past five years, The Current has grown into a team with specialized expertise across eating disorders, child and adolescent mental health, trauma, neurodivergence, perinatal mental health, and more.
The first person you’ll interact with at The Current as a client is our Assistant Clinical Director, Megan Bogue. She runs daily operations, managing all of our referrals. Megan also supports our team by supervising PLPC’s and provides our clients with specialized care for diabulimia and other complex, severe eating disorders using CBT-E and RO-DBT.
If you’re another provider connecting with us, you’ll likely meet Shayna Irvin. Shayna is our Connection Director and is your go to for updates regarding your practice and ours. For clients, Shayna specializes in eating disorders, neurodivergence, and OCD with I-CBT and RO-DBT being her favorite treatment modalities.
Kelsey Crandall keeps our practice functioning legally and ethically, overseeing all of our policies and procedures as our Policy Director. Kelsey C is a certified Perinatal Mental Health provider and her favorite population to work with is new mothers navigating the stress of that transition, while also struggling with an eating disorder. She is also on her way to being trained in EMDR this fall!
Anna Kelleher is our unicorn pulling double duty as a therapist and dietician specializing in eating disorders. Her input as a multi-disciplinary team member is invaluable, often providing consultation and cross-training from the dietician lens. Melanie Ramos Green continues to stay connected with us as she completes her PhD by providing us with insightful consultation on our RO-DBT team as well as maintaining a small caseload focused on eating disorders, body image and LGBTQ+.
Jackie Esser has played the main role in the development of our Child & Adolescent Clinic acting as the Assistant Clinical Director. She has provided the majority of the training for our Child & Adolescence therapists and students. Jackie’s passion is working with kids ages 4-16 using Play Therapy and IFS. The C&A Team includes Elise Smith, Stephanie Meals and Tyler Davis. Alongside specializing in eating disorders in ages 10-25, Elise specializes in childhood OCD, ADHD and Autism using I-CBT and RO-DBT. Elise also connects us with our community by serving as the Marketing Assistant managing our social media and monthly newsletter. Stephanie loves working with ages 6-18 and parents of children who are dealing with eating disorders. Tyler is passionate about working with older adolescents, eating disorders and personality disorders.
We love having practicum and internship graduate students! The Current typically provides placement for 2-3 students per year. Soeun Hong is entering into her second year as a fellow and continues to grow her specialization in treating eating disorders in adults, providing a safe space for diverse ethnicities and minority communities.
Kelsey Esser continues to serve as Founder and Clinic Director. Her work centers on supervising and training clinicians and students and serving as a state-wide expert on eating disorders and suicidal and self-injurious behaviors. She leads our Eating Disorder and RO-DBT Consultation Teams and manages the business’s financial, clinical and marketing procedures. What began as one clinician’s vision has grown into something much bigger than she could have imagined.
Together with our other clinicians, fellows, and interns, this team allows The Current to serve clients with a wide range of needs while maintaining our commitment to specialized, evidence-based care.
More Than Therapy: Building a Community of Clinicians
One of the things we are most proud of is that our growth hasn't only been about the number of clients we serve.
It has also been about developing clinicians.
Since 2021, The Current has been a practicum or internship site for 10 students, and we have trained 19 therapists and students in-house in eating disorder specialization and in either standard DBT, RO-DBT, or both.
We believe that specialized mental health care becomes stronger when clinicians have opportunities to learn, consult, ask questions, and grow together.
That's why consultation and collaboration are such an important part of our culture.
Our team participates in specialized Consultation Teams, including Eating Disorder Consultation Team, RO-DBT Consultation Team, and Child & Adolescent Consultation Team. The Consultation Teams are at the heart of The Current. These spaces allow our clinicians a safe space to continue learning and ensure that clients benefit from the collective knowledge and experience of the practice.
Growing Beyond Eating Disorders
Although eating disorder treatment remains central to our mission, our understanding of eating disorders has also taught us something important:
People rarely come to therapy with just one problem.
Eating disorders often intersect with anxiety, OCD, trauma, depression, perfectionism, body image concerns, neurodivergence, relationship difficulties, and other mental health concerns.
That is why The Current has expanded our services to include specialized treatment for:
Eating disorders and disordered eating
Body image
Anxiety and OCD
Trauma
Disorders of overcontrol
Depression
Perinatal mental health
Neurodivergence
Children, adolescents, and family concerns
Perfectionism and people-pleasing
Suicidal and self-injurious behaviors
Our goal is to meet the whole person—not just the diagnosis.
The People Behind the Practice
As we celebrate five years, we also want to recognize something that numbers can't capture: the people who made this possible.
Our clients trusted us with some of the most vulnerable parts of their lives.
Our families invited us into complicated and sometimes painful systems.
Our referral partners trusted us to care for the people they sent our way.
Our students allowed us to teach them.
Our therapists challenged themselves to keep learning.
And our team continued to show up for one another through growth, transitions, new programs, new roles, new spaces, maternity leaves, new clinicians, and plenty of unexpected changes along the way.
Our practice has changed significantly since 2021. But our core values have remained constant:
Authenticity. Connection. Effectiveness. Sustainable change.
Those values guide how we care for our clients, how we support our clinicians, and how we continue building The Current.
So…What's Next?
Five years ago, we didn't know exactly what The Current would become.
Honestly, we still don't.
And we're okay with that.
Because if there is one thing our work has taught us, it's that meaningful change requires flexibility. Sometimes the path we planned isn't the path we end up taking. Sometimes growth looks like adding another office. Sometimes it looks like launching a new program. Sometimes it looks like saying goodbye to something that no longer fits. And sometimes it looks like taking a leap into something entirely new.
What we do know is that we want the next five years to be guided by the same commitment that brought us here:
To provide safe, effective, specialized mental health care—especially for people struggling with eating disorders and the complex concerns that often accompany them.
We want to continue expanding access to specialized treatment.
We want to continue training clinicians.
We want to continue building meaningful relationships with other providers and organizations in our community.
We want to continue developing services for children, adolescents, adults, and families.
And most of all, we want to continue helping people move toward lives that feel authentic, connected, and worth living.
Five Years of The Current
When we look back, we don't just see five years. We see
600+ people served.
19 clinicians and students trained.
10 practicum and internship students supported.
A comprehensive RO-DBT program with 42 RO-DBT clients served.
A growing Child & Adolescent Clinic.
A team of clinicians who care deeply about specialized treatment.
And thousands of moments of connection, courage, learning, and change.
We are incredibly grateful to every client, family member, referral partner, student, therapist, colleague, and community member who has been part of this journey.
Thank you for trusting us.
Thank you for growing with us.
And thank you for helping us become The Current.
Here's to five years—and to whatever comes next.
There's no better time than the current to begin.
