About Gorge Therapy Group
Rooted in the Gorge. Built for the Community.
Gorge Therapy Group was founded in 2025, after nearly a decade of behavioral health work across the Columbia River Gorge, out of a simple belief: that people here deserve access to quality mental health care close to home.
Our region is stunning, and rural. For too long, residents have faced long waitlists, limited insurance options, and the burden of driving hours for care. Gorge Therapy Group was built to help close that gap, working alongside the schools, clinics, and community organizations already doing this work.
We are a group practice located at the Community Roots Wellness Hub in White Salmon, WA, with telehealth availability across Washington state. Our therapists specialize in working with individuals, teens, and families navigating trauma, life transitions, relationship challenges, and more.
OTHER PARTNERS
Gorge Therapy Group partners with the White Salmon Valley School District to provide therapy in the schools.
We also partner with Skyline Health to provide licensed therapists inside the community clinic. To book a therapist at Skyline please call the clinic directly.
Clinical Oversight
Every GTG therapist receives ongoing individual clinical supervision from Kay Alton, LCSW, LICSW (Lic # 61507406), our Owner and Clinical Director. Kay brings over 15 years of experience working with vulnerable populations, nearly a decade of it here in the Gorge, along with advanced training in EMDR and PACT and a deep commitment to ethical, high-quality care. Kay also brings in local licensed therapists at a PhD level for further clinical group consultation to provide further guidance and growth for providers.
This supervision structure means you're never just a client of one therapist — you have a whole team invested in your care.
More About Kay
I came to the Columbia Gorge in 2016, and I’ve been doing this work here ever since.
I started in homes, providing in-home preservation and reunification services alongside the state, in Spanish and English, working with families to keep kids safely at home or to bring them back after they’d been removed. That work showed me, up close and fast, how few mental health resources our community actually has. It’s the reason for everything I’ve built since.
That same year I continued my previous work with incarcerated people at our regional jail, first teaching yoga to adults and then in juvenile detention. Over time that grew into broader behavioral health services, including groups and one-on-one work. I stayed for nearly a decade, and I learned that meeting people where they are, with a kind acceptance, is where real change starts.
Around the same time, I joined the board at CultureSeed, where I later became Behavioral Health Director and built a program that started when the executive director asked me a simple question: “What would you do if you could do anything, based on what you’re seeing we need?” Part of that work was understanding the deep behavioral health inequities in the Gorge, especially the gap between the Washington and Oregon sides of the river. I’ve since presented on that inequity, including at the Southwest Accountable Community of Health summit in 2025. I’ve also worked in our local schools since 2018, and this is my third year holding a contract to provide therapists for vital mental health services there. That contract was only possible because I was on the ground for years in the Wellness Center and in the schools learning about the needs and making connections with students, teachers and administrators.
I build things because I know what it’s like to go without. I was born into an intentional community of nonprofit workers, where my parents earned about twenty dollars a month. I spent my early childhood in Nairobi, Kenya, then grew up in Brussels, Belgium where I didn’t speak the language of my peers. I learned to read and write in English in fifth grade when I moved to an English speaking school. I don’t need much, and I’m not afraid of risk, because I come from people who took risks in the name of something bigger than themselves.
For years I talked about how challenging the behavioral health system was in Klickitat County. Eventually I got tired of just talking about it. The problem felt so big and overwhelming that I could have retired quietly into private practice. Instead, I started Gorge Therapy Group. I don’t believe GTG is the solution; no single practice is. I see it as one piece of the all-inclusive care this community still needs, and I’m always looking to collaborate with the people and organizations already doing this work. I just wanted to stop talking and start filling the gap.
If you have thoughts or ideas, email me at kay@gorgetherapygroup.com. I’m all ears. Let’s grab a seat and a coffee.
You can find out more about my private practice and book an individual or couples session at www.altoncc.org.