Marsha Bradford walks through the bones of what will soon be the Diversified Health and Wellness Center (11040 Manchester). Sunlight glints off exposed steel beams, and debris litters the floor. It’s early August, and construction is wrapping up. In a month, the 5,000-square-foot space will house rooms for massage therapists and acupuncturists, as well as an art and dance studio and a childcare room.
“I wish it was done today,” says Bradford, who’s a licensed counselor.
Since she was an undergrad, she’s had the same goal: to open an accessible integrative wellness center to which the community can come for counseling, therapy, yoga, fitness, reiki…anything to help improve the body, mind, and spirit.
She originally designed the center to be an adjunct to a hospital. After working for 14 years at a St. Louis hospital, mostly in the inpatient psych ward, she came to oppose electroshock convulsive therapy and too much reliance on medication. What if the hospital offered inpatient counseling or massage therapy? she thought. “There’s not a good marriage between the two, and I think there should be,” she says.
So two and a half years ago, after expanding her group counseling practice, Bradford began plans for the center. She signed a lease on the Kirkwood building a year ago, and part of the center opened in May, offering counseling sessions, yoga, dance classes, and acupuncture; soon, the center will offer childcare services. “I absolutely insisted we have that, because one of the roadblocks I’ve consistently seen with clients,” Bradford says, “is the inability to come in because of lack of childcare.”
For the host of wellness services, Bradford contracts providers whom she’s interviewed extensively. “The goal is to help in whatever capacity we can,” she says. “The goal has always been the client first and the health and wellness of our clients above everything else.”
