Lakeland Behavioral Health System - Residential

“Please don’t send you kid here!! This is the worst place, I was SA’s twice had a panic attack so bad that 3 staff had to carry me out of my room because of one of the staff. The place is so nasty, the food is disgusting and is always uncooked. And when I got sick there and begged to lay down for an hour they told me no because I didn’t need to as I was folded over in pain crying and the got yelled at by one of the staff because I was “being dramatic”. They made my mental health 1000% worse and the therapist I had the first time I was there made me want to relapse she was down right rude and disrespectful. We got sent to our rooms with nothing to do except work sheets for a punishment even though only one person was the problem. Instead of giving us more group therapy they made us do work sheets and threatened us with a packet if we didn’t stop talking, mind you they band us from paper and all writing/ drawing utensils unless it was for work. Which we also had to tv sp they only entertainment we got was RT for one hour a day which was an grey isolated box where we had to play with something by our self’s since we couldn’t touch one another.”

“I was hospitalized 3 years ago here when I was 16. At the time there was an outbreak of the flu. I caught it and all they did was lock me in a room for 24 hours with no contact with anyone. Staff were extremely inconsiderate, rude and abusive with power. We were made to sit on the floor as no seating was offered unless we were eating a meal. The facilitys were completely disgusting. Girls would harass each other and very little was done to stop anything. Please do not send your child here. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had.”

“If I could give this place 0 I would it’s been 20 yrs since I spent 10 months here and it was truly one of the worst experiences of my life. If you are a foster kid it is even worse the things they do because there is no one to hold anyone accountable. I had hoped that this place was shut down by now it’s sad to see it’s still going. Do yourselves a favor if you truly love your child send them somewhere else this is not the place for them it will permanently alter there life and not for the good.”

“Whether you are self admitting or are involuntarily admitting someone, please stay away from this place. (I want to first say that this facility has multiple sexual abuse cases against the people they've employed and 32 plaintiffs against lakeland themselves.) I was admitted here on the adolescents unit (4-south) 2 years ago and the things that happened to me and others, stay with me to this day. I will not go into detail as i simply do not want to re-live/re-experience the things that happened but i will try my best to explain what happened while i was there so others can understand the dangers of this place. When i was admitted no one told me what was going on and where i was supposed to be at certain times, such as for group therapy or other activities that they do, instead i had to rely on the other inpatients to tell me everything. Inpatients are also not allowed calls for the first 24 hours and when you do get calls you are only allowed 5 minutes (it more than likely was less but i cant fully remember the time), you could get more minutes but you specifically had to follow a spread sheet that told you to do specific things and once those were completed you had to have certain staff sign it, which they purposefully never did, meaning you ultimately wouldn't get more time to talk to your loved ones/support team. They do not do seating at all unless its time to eat, which means every inpatient is sat on a hard floor (that they do not clean) for nearly the entire day, there were many times that after i had my hand on the floor and brought it up & it was completely brown and covered in grime. Multiple times throughout the day we are forced to do something called transition time, which is where we sit straight up, facing forward with our legs also facing forward for a minute, if anyone talks or goes out of the expected position they add an extra minute or tell the person they are going to give them a LOP2 (loss of privilege 2, this is where they take away all your phone calls along with being able to do other activities outside of group therapy). In my opinion there is absolutely no reason for this and is simply just a control tactic. Not once did they do food checks to make sure everyone was eating what they were supposed to, instead they ask you what percentage you ate and move on with it, i watched multiple girls with eating disorders actively starve themselves while the staff couldnt care any less. There were multiple altercations/arguments throughout the day and instead of staff trying to calm the situation down they instead made the situation much worse by either taunting, threatening or even encouraging the people involved. There was also a specific male staff (i cant remember his name) that had a very weird relationship with the inpatients, multiple times he was borderline flirty to me and other inpatients and just seemed very weird in the way he would carry himself specifically around the girls that were known to like him. (Theres a lot more to these parts but due to my memory and also not wanting to go into detail im unable/not willing to say all of them.) Now onto the illegal things i witnessed. I 'allegedly' watched multiple girls get lied to by their social workers and or the facility themselves such as being told their parents dont want them, they were being put in foster care, or that their too much for their parents to handle. They 'allegedly' not only do this to the children but also the parent(s) aswell, one of the most common things theyll tell the parents is that their child was doing drugs while in the facility or that the child would be better off with them (the facility) and that the parent(s) should give up custody, 'allegedly' once the parent(s) have finally given up custody the inpatient is then sent to their residential. I 'allegedly' watched this happen to multiple inpatients and i still think about them till this day. I've seen many more illegal things happen to other specific inpatients but i would feel uncomfortable posting about someone elses story on what they've went through.”