Let's Talk About 35 Years of Centra Bridges Treatment Center

Welcome to Centra Scripts. Here we talk about health, wellness and practical tips for your everyday life. I'm your host Cami Smith.

              Hi, and welcome to Centra Scripts. I am here with a team from our Centra Bridges Treatment Center and we're celebrating the 35th anniversary. When is the 35th anniversary?

Dr. John Hendrickson:

I guess, technically, it was in June.

Cami Smith:

It was in June, but we're celebrating all year long.

Dr. John Hendrickson:

Right. We're going to, I think, have a celebration sometime in August.

Cami Smith:

I love that. Okay. So as we're anticipating the celebration, we want to give you a little bit of an inside view of the history of Bridges, some of the big moments in accomplishments and amazing things that have been accomplished treating children who have gone through traumatic experiences. But you all can speak to that much better than I can, so I'm going to let them introduce themselves and we'll start on the end with Dr. John Hendrickson.

Dr. John Hendrickson:

Hi, I'm John Hendrickson. I'm the medical director. I'm a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Bridges Treatment Center. I joined Centra in 1997, so I recently celebrated my 25th anniversary with Bridges. And when I joined in '97, Bridges was 10 years old and, at that time, was just opening its third cottage, which was known as Ivy Cottage. And so, I joined Dr. Shilling, the previous medical director, to try to expand the census there at that time. Subsequently, we got as big as five cottages and 102 beds. We're working considerably smaller than that presently. But that's my story and how long I've been there. I have not been there as long as these other two gentlemen, so they can tell you more of the early history than I can.

Cami Smith:

All right.

Cray Callahan:

Wow, early history. I'm Cray Callahan, the principal of the school program at Bridges. Obviously, the kids live there and they have to go to school there. I started there in January 1990, actually working in one of the two cottages at that time. We only had Chimney and Cedar, and I was working third shift, working on my master's in special education. And I did not know that I would stay at Bridges that long after I completed my master's, but a teaching position became available. The director at the time said, "I hear you have a teaching certification." And I said, Yes," and I rolled into a position and have been there ever since.

Cami Smith:

The rest is history. Wow. All right, and Mark.

Mark Bosher:

Yeah, I'm Mark Bosher. I started at Bridges back in December 1992, but I came for a little bit different reason. I loved fishing and I called Aaron Ruley up, who was one of the therapists at Bridges at the time. And he was getting ready to leave for Michigan, and I said, "Do you guys have a place there?" So I jumped on board and started fishing at the lake, and really enjoyed that whole feature of being able to get some of my dreams met. I started as a therapist doing individual therapy, as well as family therapy. And it has been a love of my life. I've really enjoyed working at Bridges the whole entire time. I've got lots of different aspects that we did while we were there.

              When I started, we were just leaving from a substance abuse program, so I started doing group with kids that had codependency and dual diagnosed, and that was very challenging to do that. I'd worked up in Charlottesville, in a hospital that treated the same types of kids as well. It's been very, very unique in the whole process

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