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Intake – American's largest psychiatric chain

buzzfeed.com

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Re: Intake – American's largest psychiatric chain

#61

Post by djsumdog »

MrBingley wrote: post #55

> “Your job is to get patients,” said a former clinician at Salt Lake Behavioral. “And you get them however you get them.” > Two dozen current and former employees from 14 UHS facilities across the country told BuzzFeed News that the rule was to keep patients until their insurance ran out in order to get the maximum payment. Coincidentally, I was discharged this morning from a psychiatric hospital in Canada. In a non…

On the flip side, the state run facilities in the US always try to push people out or, "get them back on their feet."

I had a swimming instructor who told me her brother was mentally ill and was in and out of these all the time. He'd feel he'd need to stay there a few more weeks, but they'd push him right out. He'd do okay for a while, then stop taking his meds (because most of those meds do make you feel like shit), then he'd start having delusions again.

Eventually he'd be back to begging for 40ozs and eventually be back in the center. America's system doesn't provide enough funding, not just for mental health, but all the other services around health to help people out and be self sustainable in their communities.

Re: Intake – American's largest psychiatric chain

#63

Post by fineIllregister »

a3n wrote: post #28

I immediately went to their web site, and looked for their facilities near me. There are two, and a third in the region. I hope I remember not to go there in a crisis.

What you want is a Psychiatric Advance Directive. It's a way to outline your wishes for treatment before you have mental health care crisis.

http://www.nrc-pad.org/

Re: Intake – American's largest psychiatric chain

#64

Post by spitfire »

This would make two incredible movies.

First a horror movie about false involuntary admittance.

Second, a fantastic corporate drama ala michael clayton about the corporate hierarchy that built, runs and protects the machine.

If anyone writes the screenplay for these, I want royalties.

Re: Intake – American's largest psychiatric chain

#65

Post by Spooky23 »

maxerickson wrote: post #12
DashRattlesnake wrote: post #5

> Lauren Singer, who worked for six months at the front desk of Colorado’s Highlands Behavioral, said people who were waiting in the lobby for an assessment would ask her what it would entail. “I would frequently get yelled at for overstepping my bounds and telling them too much about the evaluation process,” Singer said. A button behind the receptionist’s desk controlled the lock to the front door of the facility, a…

There can be pernicious motives whether a facility is nominally for profit or not. (For instance, say there is a doctor who gets paid in proportion to the time they spend treating patients at a non profit facility)

People associate everything with the hospital and don't realize that doctors are frequently part of independent practices.

I remember vividly when my grandmother was in an awful hospital in NYC dying, I found the hospitalist to talk about her situation. He claimed to not Treating her and had no idea who was and directed me to another doctor. Yet he was standing at the station, with my grandmother's chart open with marking that he had just added her condition.

He actually told me the truth, but he was sitting there with a stack of files defrauding Medicare. Whatever profit the hospital was or wasn't making, the doctor was ringing his till.

Re: Intake – American's largest psychiatric chain

#67

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

Based on my experience as a patient (not at a UHS facility, as far as I can tell) I'm pretty confident that the stuff reported in this article is just the tip of the iceberg. These facilities are structured in a way that makes people doubt their own memories and feel powerless, even before the neuroleptics come out. Treatment "progress" is predicated on -- if not synonymous with -- submission. I was put on suicide watch after having a bad night's sleep and complaining that my experience had been harmful rather than helpful. I found out later that the psychiatrist had written in my file that I'd had psychotic episodes, which never happened (I'm torn on whether to attribute this to error or falsification). I've thought about challenging this, but I wouldn't even know where to begin, and I'm fairly certain it would just end up being my word against his and not actually doing any good. Basically, the playing field is heavily tilted against reporting misconduct. For every person Buzzfeed was able to find, there are probably ten who didn't feel like they could speak out about it, or convinced themselves that they were just being irrational since, after all, they were literally a mental patient.
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