The Emily Program Eating Disorder Residential Treatment Center, Anna Westin House for Adolescents - St. Paul, MN — Local services in Saint Paul

I can’t speak for everybody, but I can certainly state my experiences and thoughts.

To any parent or child reading the reviews, don’t be frightened. It’s not all bad. You’ll make amazing friends and great connections, but they are many, MANY flaws.

I was at TEP September-October 2024, and May-June 2024. The first time, it was more beneficial than the second. It’s very structured, and the group therapy is helpful (from my personal experiences).

The second time, though, was hell. I was constantly advocating EVERYDAY to my therapist, Brittany, my dietitian, Tara, and as many BHTs I can count. The only people in this facility that listen are the BHTs. I was begging to be heard, as I needed more eating disorder support after discharge (the IDP program actoss the street), because my eating disorder was MUCH worse than it was the last time I had admitted. And they sent me to mental health PHP. Which is crazy, considering last time when my eating disorder wasn’t as intense, they sent me to IDP.

This is where it gets insanely messy. I went to family therapy on Friday, October 25th, thinking nothing of it. I walked in, and my therapist handed me my relapse prevention plan, and told me I had 5 DAYS before I’d discharge. Five days. Not the week and a half notice they’re supposed to give, no; five days. And she told me I’d be going to the place I KNOW wouldn’t help, and the thing I’d been advocating against for my entire stay. I was not even there for the average length of stay, and my meal compliance was struggling intensely. When my family arrived, she had told them when I’d be leaving. Here’s the good part— my family had discussed with my treatment team that they’d be out of state for that whole week, and were told they were set. My treatment team knew full well I was not ready to leave. My family was furious, and I was devastated. My feelings were entirely unconsidered.

My friends all agreed it was disgusting, as did many of my family members, BHTs, etc. It had devastating effects on my mental health, I began to engage in more eating disorder behaviors and I was spiraling because of how this had similar effects on me as traumatic events I’ve experienced.

There have been therapists and staff (Looking at you Alyssa, Alice, and Chelsea) who have gaslit SEVERAL of my friends into believing they do not have eating disorders. The stays here are incredibly short (in some cases, slightly longer) because they don’t REALLY care about your eating disorder— they just want more money. They’ll make you leave when you’re less than 10% ready and replace you with someone (who’s recovery matters just as much as the next person) and do the same thing to them. The BHTs saved my life, and the first time was a little more helpful, but things have clearly changed since then.

If you go here, I beg you to advocate for yourself, show them that you’re not ready if you’re not, and never stop. They won’t listen or care if you don’t...

The admissions team is disorganized, unhelpful and not knowledgeable.

They are obviously trained to talk in an empathetic voice, but they do not listen or understand. And a lot of times there’s a significant delay before they talk. I’m not sure if that’s the technology or because they have a coach helping them or they are texting their friends as they work. One of them even just trailed off mid sentence and went silent. It makes the call more emotionally labor-intensive, but if that was the only thing I probably could have overlooked it.

I had significant technical problems with the app which they said was a known thing when registering two people. But it never got resolved despite multiple tickets and me having to call back and re-explain the situation to a new person.

I was rescheduled multiple times and each time all the information I sent was not transferred to the new person. And in one case, I said I would send it to her (two business days in advance of the appointment) and she said she would not have a chance to look at it before the appointment. Real professional 🙄. But OK.

And one of the reschedules, they left a voicemail to reschedule a few hours before the appointment. But they started talking before the beep and repeated themselves a lot so all I got was a garbled message that I thought was spam.

When we finally did get an appointment (which was for the wrong thing and a waste of time), she also said she had not been given the information unless it came in by fax and she hadn’t seen it. 😡

So they obviously are not expected to go into the appointments prepared with the information the client has taken the time to send.

After multiple reschedules and significant problems with their online enrollment system I advocated to get rescheduled same day. The appointment was just a questionnaire that could have been filled out online.

And after the questions they said it was the wrong kind of initial appointment for what we needed. And it would be another three weeks before we could get the right one.

I called admissions back and they said they were apologetic for the oversight but they had just been trying really hard to get me in same day. 🤦‍♀️ I tried to patiently explain that if it’s not for the right appointment and it causes you a significant delay in getting the right appointment that is very unhelpful. She just kept seeking validation that the person who did it had been well...

I went to the Emily program twice. Once in 2019 and once in 2020. It was better than Melrose center but still very very bad. The first time I went there, I was there for 6 weeks, struggling daily, before they put in a feeding tube. By the time they put it in, I was so medically unstable I had to be on consistent feed for a week. Instead of acknowledging the fact that my body was at high risk for referring syndrome after 6 weeks of not completing my meal plan, they kept my meal plan at a restoration plan, which had been increased steadily throughout the 6 weeks as I wasn’t gaining weight. I almost died at the hands of these people because of their lack of education and irresponsibility. The second time I went there, I was in a much better place and able to comply for the most part, but was struggling with compensatory exercise. Apparently, some of the other residents heard it at night somehow and were getting triggered. Instead of coming to talk to me about this, they sat the ENTIRE community down and openly talked about how I needed to stop because I “didn’t care for others feelings”. In this meeting, they also allowed a resident to call me stupid for thinking others couldn’t hear me. The dieticians and therapists do not know how to facilitate FBT at ALL. My mom was incredibly frustrated and confused with the entire process, and when I came home, she had no clue how to continue FBT. I also wanted to share some aspects of this place that I actually really liked, because as I said, this place isn’t the worst place I’ve been, and I’ve been to 6 different residential/inpatient ED centers. The EDTs were amazing. All of them were so kind and gave the best advice for your problems. The facility is clean and homey, which is preferred to a hospital setting in my opinion. They do a great job challenging your ed with fear foods and some of the staff are super helpful when you’re struggling. The nurses are so kind and comforting, when I had my feeding tube they were really helpful when I was upset about having to be connected to a feed. They have lots of art supplies and games. It’s boring, trust me, but every place you go to will be that way! If you have to stay in Minnesota for treatment, this place would be an okay option. But, from experience, there are better places out...