2021 Health Care Champions Therapist: Lisa Spore

Lisa Spore, co-owner and clinical director of Nixa Behavioral Services LLC, wants to make sure the entire community has ample access to mental health care services.

“Our clinic provides care to the entire family system regardless of ability to pay because we feel quite strongly that the underserved populations are a clear measure of what our society deems important,” she says. “I believe that education, compassion and support of this population is one of our greatest strengths and modeling this type of work will improve therapeutic care across the community.”

At her practice in Nixa, Spore seeks to create a “holistic healing center” to help patients achieve “mind-body connected healing and recovery.”

“This has been glaringly absent in our communities, and in bringing this type of healing to our area, we are hoping to improve outcomes for all populations,” Spore says. “We will focus on natural healing, coupled with neuroscience-based techniques that provide calm healing and a serious reduction of emotional reactivity.”

In helping patients access care, Spore often provides pro bono therapeutic services.

A family-first approach also is important.

“When referred an individual client for care, we then follow up with family members to ensure we are offering healing strategies to the entire family system,” Spore says. “This is the only way in which we can improve the lives of individuals, families and communities.”

Nixa Behavioral Services provides a variety of counseling, mental health and therapy services, and a key goal is to help patients develop skills to cope when not in the practice.

Spore practices a type of brain-based therapy called brainspotting, which can help patients access and treat unprocessed trauma.

“I provide education and instructions on how to practice brainspotting, encouraging clients to develop skills that they can use not only during our meetings, but also in their everyday lives,” she says. “This has been a major strategy that benefits clients outside of the counseling session.

“Trauma-focused therapy is critical in resolving pain and suffering for the majority of our clients.”

Spore says self-administered brainspotting has improved outcomes for approximately 80% of the practice’s patients.

The COVID-19 pandemic gave Spore the opportunity to enhance the practice’s telehealth platform. She says it was a necessary struggle amid a temporary closure caused by the pandemic and multiple stay-at-home orders.

“Transforming a business that relies on seeing patients face to face to a fully remote platform through virtual meetings was a task that all of our clinicians were fully committed to,” Spore says.

“COVID-19 presented a unique challenge in which some of the methods I utilized previously in diagnosing and evaluating patients were no longer feasible.”