Working in Clark County: Erica London, owner and therapist at Compass Whole Health

On a sunny weekday around noon, a teenager in checkered Vans shoes and headphones scrolled through her smartphone, waiting to be called into an office at Compass Whole Health.

Upbeat tunes softly played over speakers in the modern-designed waiting area with a pastel color palette and natural lighting, eliciting a sense of calm. Patrons were greeted by the office’s French bulldog, Courage, who belongs to Compass’s owner, Erica London.

London, 38, started the business in 2014, then called Compass Community Counseling. It shifted to Compass Whole Health in 2016, and recently endured a move from Hazel Dell to its current location in a business park not far from Orchards Community Park.

London said that they have around 500 active clients.

“I just knew that if we’re going to grow and continue to see more clients, and the therapists are going to take on additional days, I need to provide the space for them to do that. So we doubled our space,” London said.

A ladder analogy

On average, London, who specializes in marriage and family therapy, sees between 20 to 25 clients a week. One of her patients is Jordan Frasier, 30, who started seeing London for therapy last summer. He was referred through his mother, who previously worked with London at Evergreen Public Schools.

His weekly session was about to begin. A self-described “ferocious reader,” Frasier toted a copy of the novel “Touch with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament,” by Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychologist who wrote about her experiences with bipolar disorder.

A Clark County native, Frasier also has bipolar disorder; he was diagnosed with it in the fall. He sought help from London after moving back to Vancouver after working for about a decade as a journalist for major news outlets in Washington, D.C. He had covered 12 mass shootings and major protests, he said, and was burned out.

“I like to call it my ladder analogy — where for so long in life the next rung, the next step is really evident. You graduate high school, you go to college, you graduate college, you get your first job, and that kind of thing,” Frasier said. “Eventually you reach a point in life where the next rung isn’t super evident, and you reach a point where you start questioning everything. And sometimes … you just need to talk to somebody. I reached a point when I wasn’t sure what my next rung was.”

He has a close relationship with London, sometimes sending her emails in off hours with essays and other thoughts he’s having.

“As bipolar goes, sometimes my mood pingpongs,” Frasier said. Bipolar is defined by the National Institute of Mental Health as “a mental disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, concentration, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks.”

“It could be drastic,” London said. “He could be great right this second and an hour from now he’s feeling completely down, and I get a completely different email or response.”

“She usually knows by the verboseness of my emails what my mood is,” Frasier said, laughing.

A change of heart

When it comes to her career in therapy, London doesn’t have one of those “I-knew-when-I-was-6” stories.

In fact, when she was a child, she wanted to be a dentist. So much, in fact, she pursued it academically and ended up working in the field for seven years. But in the midst of her studies at WSU Vancouver, she had a change of heart.

“The last semester that I had there, I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be happy being a dentist for the rest of my life,’ ” London said. “I was also at the time a single mom with two kids, and I had to make a decision fairly quickly.”

She applied for a graduate program in marriage and family therapy at Northcentral University. A third-generation Latina whose ancestors migrated from Mexico, London is one of only a handful of minority-and-woman business owners in Clark County, at least who register for the certification, tracked by the state.

London also was the first in her family to pursue and complete higher education.

“It was important for me to get that classification and registration, because I take a lot of pride in just the fact that I am a person of color, I am a Latina. I wanted to be able to share that,” London said. “I’m pretty proud of the effort that I have put into it and that my family put into it to help me get to where I’m at.”

At Compass, she does a lot of work with couples and families, “particularly around divorce, conflict.”

“There tends to be hostility between the individuals, and I come in and help them hopefully communicate more effectively and teach them coping skills to handle those situations,” she said. Her own experience has helped her navigate the world of couples and marriage therapy.

“I got married very young, pretty much right out of high school. My ex-husband was in the Army, so we did some traveling, and after a couple years of that, I became pregnant with my first child,” London said. Not long after their second child was born, she said, they got a divorce.

“At the time, I didn’t realize that experience and how that would affect my work,” she said.

At Compass, she’s trying a different approach to therapy and mental health — a subject she feels society doesn’t treat with the importance it should. With a “whole health” model, Compass has several different types of therapists and health professionals under one roof.

“When somebody comes in for depression, there’s research out there that shows that what you eat can impact your depression, or if you don’t exercise, it can impact that. So, I might be working with a client on learning coping skills for the depression, but then I can refer them to a nutrition coach to talk about diet,” she said. London struggled with anxiety most of her life, she said, though hasn’t had a panic attack in years. She feels that “the media in general sugarcoats mental health,” and that people are afraid to “really talk about the nitty-gritty.”

“I explain it a lot like a physical ailment. I will let people know, let’s say for example you have a tumor coming out of your neck. I can see there’s a tumor growing there because there’s a big bulge. I may ask you about it or I may make sure that you are OK,” London said. “With mental health, you can’t see that a lot of times. We just dismiss it as it not being a real thing — or people just needing to get over it and move on. So if we put the same effort into seeing mental health as we would seeing a physical ailment, then perhaps we’d be a little more understanding when somebody says ‘Hey, I’m struggling.’ ”

That’s progress

Back in London’s office, London took out a notebook while Frasier began to talk to her about updates since their last meeting. He had moved into a new apartment.

“There were parts of it that were almost a little emotional to see my old stuff again,” he said. “The real debacle we’re having today is Bill (Frasier’s psychiatrist) started me on a new pill, and I got the text from the pharmacy that it’s ready to be picked up. Guess how much it is? $711.25 for 30 days.”

“That’s the problem,” she said. “People can’t afford these prescriptions, so then they get off the prescriptions and here we are with people who have bipolar all over the place.”

“And on the street corner talking to yourself asking for quarters,” Frasier said.

“That’s not going to happen to you,” London replied.

“Other than that, I’m hyper focused on my routines. My mental state is focused on going through the motions. I feel like it’s right here,” Frasier said, pointing to the area between his eyes.

“I feel like that’s progress, though, because it was right here,” London said, touching her chest.