Ballast Behavioral Health Group
Memphis, Tennessee · Opening September 15, 2026

Caring for
those who Carry Others

Confidential therapy and psychological assessment for healthcare providers, families, and leaders in Memphis and across Tennessee. Child and adult evaluations, therapy for clinicians, and care for those who carry the most.

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Who We Help

Healthcare providers, families, leaders, caregivers, educators, and children in Memphis and across Tennessee. Three licensed psychologists, three distinct approaches, one standard of care.

What We Offer

Psychotherapy for adults, couples, families, and teens. Psychological assessment for children and adults, including ADHD, autism, and learning evaluations. All care is psychologist-led and evidence-based.

Where We Serve

In person in the Memphis area. Telehealth may be available in Tennessee and other jurisdictions where the treating psychologist is legally authorized to practice.

Why Ballast

Ballast is the weight a ship carries below the waterline. Not cargo, and not decoration. Weight that is chosen and placed with care, because without it a vessel rides high, unstable, and turns over in weather it should have been able to cross.

The weight you carry is not just exhaustion. It is evidence that you have stood in the fracture between suffering and possibility and refused to step back.

That same weight can break you. Or, held with care and honesty, it can become ballast, giving you depth, steadiness, and a different way of changing lives.

That is the work we do here.

The Practice

Meet the Team

Dr. Tara Samples
Founding Partner and Director of Assessment Services

Dr. Tara Samples

PhD · TN Licensed Psychologist

Children, adolescents, and adults. Therapy and assessment informed by compassion-focused CBT and Schema Therapy, with particular experience in trauma, adoption and foster care, attachment, special needs, and diagnostic clarity for ADHD, autism, and learning differences. Extensive experience in medical, educational, and family-serving settings, including leadership roles.

Dr. Chris Ferrand
Founding Partner and Director of Psychotherapy Services

Dr. Chris Ferrand

PsyD · TN Licensed Psychologist

Adults and adolescents. Active, skills-focused individual therapy grounded primarily in ACT and informed by other evidence-based therapies as needed. Works with anxiety, panic, phobias, depression, trauma, grief and loss, health-related distress, and substance use concerns. Extensive experience in medical settings and leadership roles, with particular focus on helping healthcare professionals and other helpers.

Dr. Jesse Malott
Founding Partner and Director of Leadership and Organizational Services

Dr. Jesse Malott

Psy.D., M.Div. · TN Licensed Psychologist #3381

Adults, adolescents, couples, and families for therapy, all ages for assessment. Integrative work drawing from relational psychodynamic, narrative, and existential traditions. Particular experience with healthcare, leadership, moral injury, trauma, grief, diagnostic clarity, anxiety and phobias, marriage concerns, sexuality, performance psychology, ADHD, sleep, and ministry settings. Extensive experience in medical and leadership settings.

Full Team Bios →
What Sets Us Apart

Care shaped for the weight you carry.

Four pathways into our practice. Each one names who it is for, what you may be experiencing, which services are relevant, and what Ballast distinctly brings.

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Pathway One

Caring for Others

For healthcare workers, caregivers, educators, and faith leaders.

You spend your days holding other people's pain, decisions, and fear. Over time the weight accumulates quietly: burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, the sense that you are running on fumes while everyone else depends on you to be steady. We see the people who are rarely seen themselves.

What we bringWe have worked inside medical systems, schools, and ministry settings. We know the cost of caring from the inside, not only from the consulting room.
Pathway Two

Leading Under Pressure

For executives, founders, and professionals carrying real responsibility.

Leadership asks you to be the one others turn to, often without anywhere to turn yourself. Decision fatigue, isolation, and the quiet erosion of meaning can settle in beneath the performance. Confidential care for the people who cannot afford to fall apart in public.

What we bringLeadership and organizational experience alongside clinical depth. We understand pressure, stewardship, and the particular loneliness of being in charge.
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The weight you carry is not just exhaustion. Held with care, it can become ballast.

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Pathway Three

Seeking Clarity

For adults, parents, and families looking for a name for what has been hard.

Sometimes the question is not yet how to feel better, but what is actually going on. Rigorous psychological assessment for ADHD, autism, learning and cognitive differences, and complex diagnostic questions across the lifespan. The right understanding changes what comes next.

What we bringEvaluations that do more than label. We identify strengths alongside struggles and illuminate a meaningful path forward, for children and adults alike.
Pathway Four

Going Deeper

For people ready for more than symptom relief.

Some come not only to feel less pain but to understand themselves more honestly. Questions of meaning, identity, purpose, faith, and formation have a place here. Integrative, whole-person therapy that attends to the full picture of a life, not just the symptom that brought you in.

What we bringIntegrative, relationally grounded care drawing from psychodynamic, existential, cognitive, behavioral, acceptance and commitment therapy, schema therapy, and evidence-based traditions. Depth without jargon, and honesty with compassion.
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For Healthcare Professionals

We care for those who care for everyone else.

Confidential support for physicians, nurses, mental health clinicians, and other healthcare professionals experiencing burnout, moral injury, compassion fatigue, and the emotional weight of a career in healthcare. You deserve the same quality of care you give others.

Care for Clinicians by Clinicians →
Before You Decide

You carry much.
You do not have to carry it alone.

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