Ed W.
2/5
So I had a mental health assessment, but the help they offered was a 30-day inpatient treatment to help kick bad habits and all that. they told me to call off like I'm sick tomorrow. They are gonna handle all the disability and FML paperwork when I get there tomorrow.
Did I get the help I was searching for? Yes. Did it come from who I paid to help me? No. If not for the community of patients, I would be 6 than when I went into Prisma Recovery Center, in Fort Myer. First, admissions, while very comforting and reassuring, told more lies than I could count. Promising various things such as plenty of 1-on-1 time with therapists, gyms, pools, and a plethora of other features. Just to arrive on a weekend, and then wait 4 days to see a therapist 1-on-1. The main goal of the facility is to keep the beds full of the best insured patients for as long as possible. Less insured patients are quickly processed thru the program some times with no warning before their exit date. Another issue is the lack of staffing. For a revolving door of 45+ patients there are 2 case managers, 6 therapist(now 5 after one quit), few clinical support(i only met one Shar), about 8 nurses, and a handful of mental health techs(MHT). Many days, the rules, procedures, and schedules were modified to accommodate the shorted staff. My personal gripe with the place is they would hold the mentally unstable patients to a higher standard than the staff. Rushing us into the group therapy just to wait for a staff member to join 15 minutes later. Group therapy is the main tool of the facility. However, if you talk about anything to personal or "triggering," you would be shut down and told to talk personally with your therapist that you rarely got to see. I would go into more detail if not for the privacy of my fellow patients. The other main components of the facility are drugs. Upon intake, you talk to a provider for less than 2 minutes, and miraculously, they have a magice pill. I watched others get zombified as they ran the gauntlet of possible pills only to deal with the myriad of side effects. So, according to the handbook, the start of week 3 is when you're supposed to begin discussing and planning your transition to whatever is next in your individualized treatment plan. Again, this did not happen for me or any of the people I talked to. Instead, even after several requests to begin this process, I was left with no information. Probably because for the 45+ patients, there was only one coordinator to assist with post-care planning. It was my 4th week in the place before I exchanged words with the director of the place. The first time he spoke to me was to enforce an arbitrary rule that didn't apply to me. It wasn't until I politely and blatantly disregarded the rules that we even had a conversation, during which he spent most of opening letters then trying to convince me of the merit of the PHP. However, I offered no real information on the PHP, just that it would benefit me to complete it. Which may have been true, but with no real information, how could I make an informed decision. The last problem I will talk about is the fact that my FMLA and disability insurance were not processed properly or in a timely fashion. Also, processing the document so I can return to work seems to be more time-consuming than it should be. For the positives, there are a few MHTs who are there for the patients; JUNIOR, ANGELA, DELANEY, ISREAL(IZZY), JUSTIN, and ERICK ARE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. Few more techs do their job well, Sarah, Chris, Sandria, Robert. As well as the nurses, Brianna, Tray, Camedra, Mikki, and the new one, Sarah seemed like she would be good. Truly, the only thing going for the place is the community of patients. They are more concerned with keeping beds full than fulfilling their promises. Many promises blatant lies.