Access is an outpatient behavioral health clinic. We serve people of all communities and currently offer two locations in Boise and in Nampa. Our desire is to help improve the quality of daily life for our clients.
Access Behavioral Health Services is a for profit agency that serves the public without regard to race, creed, age, national origin, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, veteran status or inability to pay. The owners have been in the field of human services for a combined 30+ years. At Access we pride ourselves on providing best-practice client-centered services.
Staff Directory
We value our employees as they are the most important resource. Our employees are highly trained, supervised, and receive ongoing levels of support during their employment. We hire people from a wide range of backgrounds to meet the individualized needs of our patients. We are always seeking out new dynamic individuals to add to our treatment team. We strive to make Access Behavioral Health Services a welcoming place to work and we believe that is reflected in our employees attitudes towards their work.
Chris M. Gakwa
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner ABHS BoiseMental Health Clinic
Biographical Info
Before I became a nurse I was a support worker taking care of patients with learning disabilities. Most of the patients I took care of would fight, bite, and scream at staff. However, when we were together we would laugh for hours and we developed an amazing relationship. I realized I had an aptitude for caring for people who were considered challenging and that’s when I decided to go to nursing school.
I graduated with my Bachelors in Nursing RN from Idaho State University in 2010 and worked at a psychiatric hospital as my first job as an RN. I later left psych nursing to work at a local hospital in town as a float nurse where I would take care of patients with various diseases. After working for several years and seeing the same population with psychiatric needs at the hospital l decided to go back to school to get my Masters in Psychiatric Nursing. I graduated from Gonzaga University in Spokane in 2017 with a Masters in Psychiatric Nursing. I have now been practicing in Boise for a few years now and have experience in working with teens, adults & elderly.
As a provider I treat a person not a diagnosis. The best part of my job is when I get to make a positive impact on people and help them get their lives back on track, even if it is just to their baselines.