Brattleboro Retreat — Local services in Brattleboro

So im tired of reading peoples five star reviews that always go something like this "if you are struggling atleast struggle in a way that is not a burden to staff' "if your being rude to staff, it is A okay for them to belittle and invalidate you" and the whole "you all are just angry and dont want help!"....okay..im not here to say those five star review people are lying about how good their experince is...but why tf do they think they have the right to accuse us of lying? generaly, from reading reviews and speaking to people irl, yes, some people get lucky and have a good time, i think this is becuase staff are always getting fired and new ones hired, so you may just get the right staff but who knows if the staff you got was as nice as the staff somone eles got just a month ago on the same unit. I was admitted for the first time to brattleboro retreat unit osgood3, a teens inpatient unit, in december 2023. I had been struggling with increased suicidal ideation and agression to staff at school , which only made me feel more hopeless and suicidal. I was on a waiting list for the retreat for id say 2 weeks. somone would call every day to check in with me, which was sweet. then on december 16th my mom drove me to the hospital and i was suprised becuase no one had warned me this hospital did skin checks, but i supressed all my feelings and just dissociated, luckily it wasnt as bad as i thought, they gave me a gown to slip on so i was never fully exposed. I spent 6 days there on osgood3, some staff were really sweet, others would make fun of patients, beg us to just "be good for one day, give us a break" after a kid was restrained a staff was literaly saying that. THere was this one girl on the unit who had been there for 7 months, who was often agressive and she was treated so horribly by staff, out of all the nights i was there, she was put in the restraint chair most of those nights. i even remeber hearing secuirty guards laughing and mentioning her in the restraint chair, the next morning, other kids mentioned they overheard it too, but staff quickly told us to stop talking about it. i would definitly say my first time was alot better than my second, and yea, my first time i really did want help, but i also was terrified of acting out becuase i already had truama with restraint and seclusion so i didnt want to go through that again becuase i knew if i showed any bit of distress that staff would loose empathy for me. i had to be the "golden patient" becuase i knew if i wasnt I would be the exact opposite. it didnt do me any good, yea i got better at stuffing stuff fown, but thats never a healthy or reliable option. I remember being upset and trying to ask for a staff to talk to. they would act confused on what i needed and say stuff like "uh do u want a prn (they would give me Benadryl, sometimes 2 a night just for sleep)" and i would say "no i just wanted to talk becuase im feeling very anxious/sad/suicidal" and they would be either say "ok well remeber to use your coping skills" or "whats bothering u" and id explain and then they would just say "think positive!" like huh??? when i got out i realized i had left to early, and the new med they put me on (Abilify) was making me so nauses. i ended up loosing a shit ton of weight. I literaly almost pooped myself. i had some days where i wouldnt be able to eat at all, and even water or tea was hard to keep down, i had to go to the er bc one night it got so bad i thought i was seriously going to die, i felt horrible weak, tired, shakey and cold. im gonna write another review about my second time there soon, i just get sad thinking...

DO NOT BRING YOURSELF OR YOUR LOVED ONES HERE THERE ARE OTHER OPTIONS!!!!!!!!! I have been admitted there 2 times and was supposed to a 3rd time but I will get on that later. My first stay was 3 weeks and the whole time I was pumped full of meds and was a living zombie. The staff would constantly slam doors and yell at the teens for simply asking to have their rooms unlocked. Yes.. you need to ask to be in your safe space and the staff tends to deny entry. There was many times where I asked for a tampon and was told no because I had gotten one an hour prior. And they had sent me home worse than I was before but on 10 different medications.. I was 14 at the time. The second time pretty much the same thing happened but the staff would LITERALLY INSALT the patients and other staff to their faces. They DO NOT know how to deal with mentally ill people. Let alone teens and kids.

The time I didn’t get passed admissions was when they had changed the rules to get in. It used to be a skin check for minors to look for open wounds and deep scars. Nope. With no warning of the new rules I was told to “strip and spread your cheeks” that’s exactly what I was told. I had already been in a ptsd attack due to me not being able to be driven from the er to the retreat by my mother like I have in the past; and was shoved in an ambulance with 3 full grown men and I had verbalized that and asked if I could have my mom atleast be in the vehicle with me. No. They strapped me down and drove me to the retreat and that’s when I was told to ‘strip and spread my cheeks’ and that threw me off the rails. I started screaming to go home and was shaking obviously in a ptsd attack and my mom yelling that I was having one. Instead of the staff calling the emergency doctor on sight they spent 3 hours screaming at me and my mother threatening to give me the chair. (If you don’t know what that is it’s a chair they strap you too and give you the booty juice) making everything worse. After lots of yelling they had called the doctor on zoom and I was able to talk to her. She was the ONLY one being SLIGHTLY professional that whole time. After a while I was able to go home where I was more mentally and physically safe. from that day my ptsd has gotten way worse due to everything that happened.

A close family member of mine when she was working there as a maid she got SA’ed by one of the security guards and he is STILL THERE!! That’s ridiculous..

Please please please do not send yourself or your family here. It needs to be shut down and sued...

My daughter was struggling with mental health issues. They were unable to find her a bed anywhere in NH so they found her a bed at Brattleboro. It sounded like it would be a great place for her to get the help she needed. I was told what ward she would be on and the different programs she would attend. I was told she would have school there to make sure she wouldn't fall behind. So many things they said, but so many lies. They ended up putting her on a different ward than what they told me so when I tried to call multiple people throughout the place told me they did not have my daughter.. so that was stressful. I was told I would get daily calls for updates which I did not get. I will say the doctor and a few people there were nice and helpful to me and more importantly to her. They never reached out to her school like they said they would. My daughter was able to say no to the little bit of class they did have and they did not tell me. They did not offer any of the programs they had told me about. They also informed me that they only work on surface level issues so anything else was just not their problem and they wouldn't help with anything past getting her on meds and safe enough to come home. There are more things I could say BUT the biggest reason for writing this review is .. please do not let your pre teens / teens go here!! I was unaware that my daughter would be on the same ward with both males and females. Yes, they have separate rooms but they are left unsupervised for long enough that ADULT THINGS can happen... It blows my mind that they would allow young teenagers to be alone together in their rooms and what they get away with in the...