Mary Dobson
MA, LMFT, CEDS, CSTS

Mary Dobson, LMFT, CEDS, founded LiftWell Health out of a conviction shaped by nearly two decades on the front lines of behavioral health care. After leading residential treatment facilities across both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, and after having her own two children, Dobson became convinced that removing children and adolescents from their families for treatment, however well-intentioned, too often did more harm than good. She set out to build something different: a model rooted in recovery in real life, where a patient's home environment is not treated as background noise to their diagnosis, but as one of the most powerful levers for their recovery.

That conviction became LiftWell Health, a full-continuum behavioral health organization built around robust, multidisciplinary outpatient, intensive outpatient (IOP), and partial hospitalization (PHP) levels of care, designed around the least restrictive environment appropriate for each individual and family, so that treatment strengthens a patient's natural support system rather than replacing it. LiftWell treats clients of all genders and all ages, from children through adults, meeting each family where they are in the lifespan development cycle. Dobson has positioned LiftWell to become the next major model of behavioral health care: community integrative care, in which treatment is woven into a patient's organic community, their family, school, workplace, and peer relationships, rather than removed from it.

Perhaps the most distinctive part of Dobson's vision is LiftWell's approach to high-acuity care. Rather than defaulting to long-term residential placement, a model Dobson has come to see as frequently undermining the parental relationship and rarely trauma or attachment-informed, LiftWell partners directly with hospitals to stabilize high-acuity patients medically and psychiatrically, then transitions them back into intensive, family-inclusive treatment at home. This is a peer integrative model built on the belief that lasting recovery happens in connection with family and natural support systems, not in isolation from them. That belief has translated into real outcomes: LiftWell's model has kept parents and their children together in cases where a more restrictive level of care would otherwise have separated them, preserving the parental bond at precisely the moment families need it most. At the heart of this philosophy is systemic therapy, and the recognition that a person's symptoms rarely exist in isolation from the relationships around them. Treating an individual without treating the system they live inside is treating only half the problem.

This approach is not a compromise on quality of care; it is grounded in the clinical evidence. Partial hospitalization has repeatedly been shown to produce outcomes comparable to inpatient and residential treatment across a range of mental health conditions, while allowing patients to remain connected to their families and communities throughout treatment (ScienceDirect: Partial Hospitalization overview; Compass Health Center, 2026 outcomes study). Research specific to eating disorder treatment shows similar findings, with PHP producing rates of full or partial remission comparable to higher levels of care, including in patients with long-standing, treatment-resistant presentations (PubMed: Efficacy of a partial hospital programme for adults with eating disorders; PMC: Predictors of Stepping Up to Higher Level of Care).

Dobson has spent much of her career focused on disorders of overcontrol: the chronic perfectionism, rigidity, and emotional restraint that frequently underlie eating disorders, anxiety, and treatment-resistant depression, particularly among high-achieving women and girls. Her clinical philosophy centers on treating the temperament, not just the symptom, working from the belief that one recovery, a single underlying capacity for openness, flexibility, and connection, underlies what can look on the surface like entirely separate diagnoses. LiftWell integrates Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO-DBT) into its treatment philosophy, an evidence-based, transdiagnostic treatment developed specifically to address overcontrol, with a growing body of research supporting its use for anorexia nervosa, chronic depression, and related conditions (ABCT Fact Sheet: Radically Open DBT; Journal of Clinical Psychology: Applications and Efficacy of RO DBT). LiftWell's eating disorder programming is also HAES-informed, grounded in the Health At Every Size approach, which emphasizes weight-neutral, data-driven, evidence-based care over weight-focused treatment goals.

This philosophy is formalized in LiftWell's signature Prescription for Wellness model, Dobson's framework for individualized, whole-person treatment planning that draws on native supports and collateral contacts already present in a patient's life. Rather than prescribing a single fixed protocol, Prescription for Wellness treats each patient's temperament, family system, and community as part of the clinical picture, positioning LiftWell not simply as a treatment center, but as the architecture for a fundamentally different way of thinking about behavioral health care.

Dobson has built LiftWell around the same conviction that drives her clinical work: women with lived experience make exceptional clinicians and leaders. LiftWell actively recruits and hires women who have walked their own recovery journeys, and Dobson has developed particular expertise in team building, staff development, and organizational culture within behavioral health settings, informed by two decades spent both leading and studying what makes clinical teams effective.

Beyond LiftWell, Dobson is regularly brought in by Fortune 500 companies and school districts to lead leadership conferences and staff trainings, and she coaches C-suite executives, civic leaders, and entrepreneurs one-on-one. Her corporate and institutional work draws on industrial/organizational psychology, crisis response, and communication training, helping executive teams, elected officials, and educators alike build the same qualities she prioritizes in her own clinical teams: resilience, self-awareness, and the ability to lead through difficulty without losing connection to the people they serve.

Dobson is also the founder of the Lift Up Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that raises scholarship funds to help individuals access mental health and eating disorder treatment who could not otherwise afford it, extending LiftWell's mission of accessible, high-quality care beyond its own client base.

Dobson's advocacy extends beyond LiftWell's clinical walls. She hosts the podcast Still Working It Out, which explores the psychology of extraordinary women, not to mythologize success but to demystify it. Through candid conversations with trailblazers across psychology, business, leadership, and the arts, the show examines the hidden commonalities of the female experience: self-doubt, identity, ambition, recovery, belonging, and reinvention. Dobson brings particular passion to the realities of working mothers, mother-daughter relationships, female entrepreneurs and principal earners, populations she sees constantly in her own practice and consulting work and whose struggles are still too often overlooked. She is currently writing a book on the subject, expanding on the self-recovery framework she has spent her career developing.

Dobson's work has been formally recognized by both the Connecticut State Senate and the New York State Senate, with Citations honoring her contributions to behavioral health innovation and access to care. She is a regular contributor to national and regional media, with commentary featured in outlets including Newsweek, Fast Company, Slate, EatingWell, and Verywell Mind, among others, and remains an active voice on the state of holistic and integrative mental health recovery today.

Dobson is a licensed marital and family therapist, school-certified therapist and consultant, certified trauma therapist, and certified eating disorder specialist. In addition to training and supervising hundreds of clinicians throughout the tri-state area, Dobson is a frequent keynote presenter at behavioral health conferences, corporate leadership retreats, education conferences, and school districts throughout the country. Dobson serves on the Board of Fairfield University, and has taught courses in their graduate programs. Dobson is a lifelong Fairfield native, and resides there, with her husband (her college sweetheart,) their young children, and two dogs, Stephen Stills and Johnny Cash. In her free time, Dobson enjoys writing, hiking, boating, the beach, travel, enjoying meals with friends, and reading.