Lanaya Ethington is the co-founder and co-owner of Thrive Behavioral Health. She is a licensed psychologist in the state of Iowa, and she has over ten years’ experience working with people who represent a wide range of presenting concerns and identities.

Her treatment specializations include anxiety, depression, OCD, trauma, grief, loss, adjustment, life transitions, eating disorders, and body image concerns. She has extensive experience in working with concerns related to international students, acculturation, and complex identity development.

In her practice, Lanaya primarily utilizes Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a third-wave Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach that emphasizes the development of psychological flexibility.

Psychological flexibility is a process that helps people live more meaningful lives in the presence of both helpful and unhelpful emotional states. Lanaya believes that a fully lived life includes a broad spectrum of human experience, including both joy and pain, and that we can integrate our life experiences into a more coherent sense of self.

Lanaya integrates other therapeutic approaches into her work, including Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), Relational Frame Theory (RFT), and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP).

Lanaya spent the first fifteen years of her life as a Third Culture Kid (TCK) in Saudi Arabia, and she also completed her master’s degree at Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Counseling Psychology from Indiana University – Bloomington. Lanaya has presented at regional, national, and international conferences for the past 19 years. She also offers organizational consulting, applying ACT principles to increase group cohesion and greater organizational functioning.

Darrel Kirby is the co-founder and co-owner of Thrive Behavioral Health. He is a mental health therapist and alcohol and drug counselor.

When Darrel found his own life unravelling at age 20 and unexpectedly losing all of his eyesight, he sought psychotherapy and discovered such healing that he was driven to establish a career helping others.

Simply stated, Darrel believes whole-heartedly in his clients and their ability to heal wounds, gain insight, make healthy changes, and thrive!

Darrel is passionate about his work and is committed to not only helping people feel better but actually get better. His style is warm, yet firm and driven by the expectation that his clients will commit to therapy and work through adversity, including mental health struggles, to live rich, full, meaningful lives.

Darrel graduated with his master’s degree in Social Work (MSW) in 2008 and has spent the past decade gaining an abundance of experience helping people of all backgrounds.

His style is eclectic and tailored to the individual client, with approaches rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance commitment therapy (ACT), and EMDR, Darrel is confident helping people facing depression, anxiety, relationship problems, adjustment, trauma and its impact, addictions and substance use problems, disordered eating, grief, low self-esteem, identity concerns, motivation and organizational problems, as well as many other life challenges.

Darrel recognizes that his clients are the experts of their own lives and that his responsibility is to offer understanding, acceptance, hope, reflection, insight, and skills.

Darrel is an Iowa native, having now lived in Iowa City over 20 years and is active in the community. You may find him checking out a local band, attending a local community theatre production, cheering at a Hawkeye wrestling meet, or dining out with friends.