Sheridan Memorial Hospital is thrilled to welcome psychiatrist Christopher Hellekson, MD, to our growing Behavioral Health team as we prepare for the mid-July 2026 opening of our new behavioral health unit, The Path.
Originally from Lockwood, Montana, Dr. Hellekson has spent much of his life exploring northern Wyoming and southeast Montana.
“I grew up hunting and fishing just on the Montana side of the border, near Decker and at Tongue River Reservoir and Bighorn Lake,” he said.
His path to a career in medicine was shaped by both family influence and personal experience. Growing up with a mother who worked as a labor and delivery nurse, healthcare was always familiar to him. Initially considering a career in law, his direction shifted after an injury interrupted his college athletics career.
“Healing and recovering from that injury allowed me to continue my college athletic career, which was a huge thing for me,” he said. “That got me thinking about becoming an orthopedic surgeon.”
While attending medical school at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dr. Hellekson’s initial interest in orthopedics shifted to radiation oncology after the loss of a family member to cancer. After graduating from medical school in 2017, he completed a transitional year internship at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in 2018, followed by a year of residency training in radiation oncology at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in 2019.
Over time, Dr. Hellekson realized psychiatry most closely aligned with both his background in philosophy and his interest in the humanistic side of medicine. He later completed his psychiatry residency at Providence Psychiatry Residency Spokane in 2022.
He has practiced psychiatry in Missoula, Montana, since 2022, providing care in outpatient clinics, inpatient psychiatric units and hospital consultation settings. Dr. Hellekson values building long-term relationships with patients while helping them work toward meaningful change.
“Every person requires a different set of answers to the difficult challenges they may face in their lives,” Dr. Hellekson said. “In psychiatry, you get to build longitudinal relationships over time with people and see meaningful change that patients may never have even thought was possible for themselves.”
He emphasizes understanding the full picture of a patient’s life and believes treatment plans should be individualized, collaborative and thoughtful.
“For me, I really try at the beginning to spend a lot of time understanding what’s going on in someone’s life that has brought them to me in that moment, which is often in a time of crisis,” he said.
He said he looks forward to becoming part of the Sheridan community and praised the community’s investment in behavioral health services.
“It’s a place that’s investing in and building behavioral health services, which is a really amazing thing,” he said. “Having a community that values those services and invests in them is really appealing to me.”
After touring The Path, he said he was impressed by its intentional design and focus on healing.
“When you get to build something from the ground up, when it’s intentionally meant to be a healing place, you can definitely tell the difference,” he said.
Outside of work, he enjoys hunting, fishing, gardening and spending time outdoors with his wife and young daughter. As he prepares to relocate to Sheridan, he looks forward to exploring the community and becoming involved both inside and outside the hospital.
“I’m excited to integrate into the community and not just be a part of building the behavioral health unit at the hospital, but also just contributing to other things in the community as well,” he said.
To learn more about Behavioral Health services available at Sheridan Memorial Hospital, visit https://www.sheridanhospital.org/medical-services/clinics/behavioral-health/.