Mental Health Center adds to Libby staff

The Libby office of Western Montana Mental Health Center has added three new providers to its staff of mental health care professionals. Doug Richardson, LCPC, Kirsten Koenig, CPC-IT and Nancy K. Huus, LCSW, CMHP have joined the Libby office of the clinic and have begun seeing patients.

Richardson comes from Juneau, Alaska, where he was working with teens and young adults in a crisis stabilization shelter. His 23-year history of patient care includes emergency on-call work for children and adults in hospital and jail settings. He has also worked as director of a boarding school for adolescent males and as a licensed additions counselor at a halfway house and residential treatment program.

Richardson has a Master’s Degree in professional counseling from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Ariz., and a Bachelor’s Degree in social work from Chadron State College in Nebraska. He is excited to return to northwest Montana, as he is an avid outdoorsman who enjoys hunting, fishing, hiking and camping with his wife of 30 years. He also enjoys woodworking and gardening.

Kirsten Koenig, CPC-IT has moved to Western Montana Mental Health Center from Stone Creek, Ohio, where she taught psychology to nursing students, assisted with psychological testing and was responsible for diagnostics and assessments with several practicing psychologists. She has a 20-year history in mental heath care, including work with dually-diagnosed, severely mentally ill and aged patients. She has extensive experience in trauma and addiction counseling.

Koenig has a Master’s Degree in professional counseling from the University of Dayton and is completing her Ph.D. in psychology within the next six months. She is currently working to obtain her Montana licensure.

Koenig is thrilled to move to Libby and live in the mountains, where she has always dreamed of living. She is also looking forward to learning more about the native communities of the area, as she spent much of her free time attending pow-wows in Ohio.

Nancy K. Huus, LCSW, CMHP transferred to Libby from the Western Montana Mental Health Center in Hamilton, where she worked as a stabilization worker at West House Crisis Center and co-facilitated dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness groups. Prior to joining the center, Huus had a 15-year career in corrections as a treatment coordinator in the women’s unit of the Missoula pre-release center, an adult probation and parole officer, a deputy juvenile probation officer and a misdemeanor probation officer. Her work in all of these positions involved working with mentally ill or co-occurring clients.

Huus earned her Master of Social Work in 2011 from Walla Walla University and began working toward certification as a licensed additions counselor, assisting with ACT classes in Mineral County. She came to Libby in 2013 to assist the outpatient therapist and has not left since. For the past year she has served as the Lincoln County Community Mental Health Professional and as the emergency on-call mental health professional. Nancy has enjoyed building relationships with the other professionals in the area. 

Nancy and her husband of 30 years are Guide Home parents, foster parents for adolescent girls as they are released into the community from Riverside Correctional Facility. She has two adult children and two grandchildren. She takes pleasure from serving others and so likes to say she “hasn’t worked a day in her life.”