The Refuge Center for Counseling

The Refuge Center exists to offer excellent, accessible and affordable mental and emotional healthcare service in support of a transformational impact on communities. In carrying out this mission, The staff and board of directors strive to strengthen systemic, community health and to make excellent, life-saving mental and emotional healthcare services accessible and affordable to all. Through an income-based sliding-fee scale, The Refuge Center is able to live out its vision that "no matter who you are, where you're from, what's been done to you or what you have done, you deserve The highest quality of care and an opportunity to heal and flourish." The Refuge Center indeed offers "Refuge" by providing a place that offers support, connection, hope, and healing to children, individuals and families facing crisis, loss, and suffering. As an "emotional first responder" often serving some of The most vulnerable in The community, those struggling with self-harm, suicidality, domestic abuse and on, The Refuge Center always has a significant demand for life-saving mental and emotional health Counseling at an affordable rate. In The 2022-2023 fiscal year, The Refuge Center served 4,009 clients from 18+ counties in middle Tennessee through 38,034 life-changing Counseling sessions on The income- based sliding scale fee structure. 89% of Refuge's clients utilize The sliding-fee scale. The Refuge Center currently has more than 70 counselors, and by partnering with several local and regional universities, master's level interns on The team. Each counselor brings a different area of focus, including anxiety, depression, domestic and sexual violence, addictions, marital therapy, grief and loss Counseling, family Counseling, divorce adjustment, parenting challenges, and therapy for children and teens. In addition to these areas of focus, The Refuge Center offers continuity of care through specialized therapeutic modalities like emdr, neurofeedback, group Counseling, brainspotting and pcit (parent child interaction therapy) - all on a sliding-fee scale. The Refuge Center for Counseling values systemic health, affordability, excellence, education and hope. Counseling helps remove The burdens, barriers, and shame stories that keep people from experiencing freedom and allows individuals and families to live fully alive with an authentic connection to themselves, and others. We see first-hand how when one person becomes healthier, a family becomes healthier, a community becomes healthier, and so on. When pain is transformed, not transmitted, it changes families. Healed families change communities. The Refuge Center believes deeply in The ripple effect of healing and The power it has to change communities.