Presented by Burrell Behavioral Health
This post was paid for and produced by Burrell Behavioral Health. The Daily Citizen newsroom was not involved in the creation of this content.
SPRINGFIELD — Along with beans, squash, peppers and sunflowers, hope has grown in an alcove on the Burrell Behavioral Health campus in southern Springfield.
This year, clients and team members at Burrell’s RecoverED eating disorder clinic tended a new garden outside Building B on Burrell Behavioral Health’s Springfield campus. It’s a collaboration between RecoverED, the Brightli Foundation, Greater Ozarks Center for Advanced Professional Studies (GO CAPS), the McCauley Foundation and Ellsaesser Building Company. It’s also part of a growing effort to expand programming to treat eating disorders, which are prevalent, serious and impactful challenges for both the people who face them and their loved ones as well.
RecoverED opened in Springfield in 2020 in part because the program’s director, Stephanie Robbins, lacked a local option when she sought treatment for anorexia. “I was born and raised in Springfield, and when I finally decided that I needed to get some help there was only one therapist in town who specialized in EDs, and there were no treatment facilities within a three-hour radius of Springfield.” After seeking help for herself, Robbins went back to school with the goal of developing a center for others in Springfield to receive the help she had to leave home to get.
(Photo provided by Burrell Behavioral Health)
(Photo provided by Burrell Behavioral Health)
Since RecoverED opened, the staff has roughly tripled in size and RecoverED has been honored by the Missouri Eating Disorders Council as a Center of Excellence. The footprint has grown as well. Last year, RecoverED began offering virtual intensive outpatient program (IOP) therapy across the state; this year, RecoverED in-person programming expanded to the Columbia area.
RecoverED’s recent wins will be celebrated by the team and clients in early October at a celebration to be held in a space that is both utilitarian and symbolic when it comes to treating eating disorders, the garden.
‘Your eating disorder can be in the rearview mirror’
To address an eating disorder is to address, and often significantly change, your relationship with food, Burrell Behavioral Health Therapist Alaina Steele said. To grow your own food and to spend hours tending to it can help reshape what is often a secretive condition.
“You can be fully recovered, you can have a beautiful life, and your eating disorder can be in the rearview mirror,” Steele said.
The Brightli Foundation funded the cost of materials for raised garden beds as part of a GO CAPS project for high school students Ella Steele and Violet Ellsaesser. They helped plan the garden’s layout and a plan for how to make it work with the RecoverED program.
Alaina Steele is a certified master gardener and cook who isn’t afraid of using some of grandma’s old recipes. She uses horticulture therapy as part of the program to help RecoverED clients develop a healthy relationship with food.
“If they grow it from the very beginning, maybe they’re going to be more interested in eating it,” Steele said. “Just being able to watch a plant grow makes them feel like they are growing in their own recovery.”
The garden didn’t start in the dirt, but on a whiteboard. RecoverED clients took part in a brainstorming session to decide what to grow in the raised beds. Long before the spring planting season, adolescent clients planted seeds inside and cared for them under grow lights, which the McCauley Foundation funded.
By the summer of 2025, RecoverED clients were growing tomatoes, bush beans, herbs, zucchini, strawberries and more.
(Photo provided by Burrell Behavioral Health)
Access to care for eating disorders
Clients come from all over Missouri for eating disorder treatment at the Burrell Behavioral Health campus in Springfield.
“We serve the whole state at RecoverED, and we’re the only treatment facility in the state that readily accepts Medicaid for a higher level of care than outpatient,” Steele said. “We have a high prevalence of food-insecure clients.”
Aside from RecoverED, individuals with acute eating disorders often have to travel to major metro areas like St. Louis, Kansas City or Tulsa for treatment programs.
“There is only one residential treatment opportunity for adults; there are two for adolescents, none of them readily accept Medicaid,” Robbins said. “We have outpatient and then we have intensive outpatient treatment. We are the only facility in Missouri with intensive outpatient treatment for eating disorders that readily accepts Medicaid.”
Adolescent treatment is for clients ages 12-18, while individuals ages 18 and older recover in the adult program. Adult clients can seek treatment in person on the Burrell campus or in a virtual setting.
At any given time, about 165 clients are active in outpatient and intensive outpatient treatment programs at the RecoverED clinic. A typical treatment cycle for intensive outpatient treatment is 12 weeks, but the length of treatment varies client by client.
(Photo provided by Burrell Behavioral Health)
Let’s all take a bite together
The RecoverED team includes therapists, registered dietitians, community support specialists and additional service providers on a case-by-case basis. Community support specialists work with clients on their activities of daily living and examine how eating disorders impact clients’ abilities to function on a daily basis when they leave the supportive environment of the RecoverED clinic. Treatment plans sometimes include behavioral health care for clients’ parents, spouses and other loved ones.
“It’s not just about treating an eating disorder, it’s about treating the whole entire person,” Steele said. “Eating disorders are all consuming for the person. They’ve lost their daily function.”
Key milestones in the RecoverED programs are measured during therapeutic meals. Clients experience cooking and eating together with their therapists and other RecoverED team members.
“They are challenged in a supportive environment, but we’re sitting there and we’re helping them through it in a family-style meal,” Steele said. “Part of this gardening is so crucial because they can say, ‘I grew this, I get to go out and cut it and then I get to add it to my meal that I am learning how to cook.’”
By learning how to support and care for each other in the RecoverED program, clients learn to care for themselves and how to build their support networks when they finish their treatment plan.
“It’s really beautiful to see when somebody is struggling, some of the other participants rally behind them and say, ‘Let’s all take a bite together,’” Robbins said.
Community and healing bloom in the hands of people who understand (Photo provided by Burrell Behavioral Health)
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