Palm Shores Behavioral Health Center

"From admissions with Albie till Discharge I wasn't informed as I feel I should have been I was not totally informed of discharge. I was supposedly emailed Lucas to which I never did I spoke to Lucas but was in therapy as I have my own issues plus my sister recently passed . My niece was a patient. She loved the staff and was treated well except for the medical issues that made her trigger her... All in all it was a ok experience wish I had been better informed on her discharge than having a 15 yr old tell her guardian and not the staff... Sydney was a great therapy..."

"It was alright. The staff were really caring( well some of them were, others seemed like they didn’t want to work there) the discharge planning is terrible. My mom got no information abt my discharge and now I have to deal with getting all of it since I’m 18. But other than that it was alright. The therapist were great and the supervisors were amazing"

"If the hospital is for-profit and is owned by UHS, the largest chain of privately-owned psychiatric hospitals in the country, it is hell. I was mainly abused by Bartholomew Vereb Jr. (d. 2019), and was treated as if I was a lab animal for three months. There were a few techs who cared, but most of them were just complete a-holes. They would "write you up" over "Violating Confidentiality". Basically, they're bringing a responsibility that is management's job and laying it on the kids who have 17 other problems that were going on. In other words, they are using the patients to prevent any investigations/audits by AHCA, Joint Commission, and HHS, also, they used this punishment method to not get HIPAA fines/violations. The techs are paid pennies based on UHS's billions of dollars in revenue. They claim patients would see their psychiatrist "at least once a week". I only saw my doctor once during my stay. The doctor drugged me on meds that are polar opposites side effect wise. On the end that made me a 12 year old zombie, was Depakote (valproate) and on the higher end Adderall (amphetamine salts). Adderall kept me up all night, and made me severely drowsy during school due to staying up all night. I was basically kept there until my insurance ran out, which is common in UHS facilities across the country. I also feel my rights under the ADA were being violated. Whenever we would get audited by an agency, we were told to keep our mouths shut, or we were going to be written up. The facts are, you need to do your research on these facilities. If you are looking for immediate help, use All Children's Hospital if in Tampa and AdventHealth for Children if in Central Florida, also, CALL 911 or 988 if in a severe psychiatric crisis."

"If you actually love your kid you will not send them here. I stayed for 5 months and had safe behavior for the last 3 months. (i got no DCF's which is their way of monitoring unsafe behavior). The whole time there I was mentally abused by a handful of staff. I was called the f-slur multiple times by staff, just because they were mad at me. I had one that told me everyday that I would rot in hell because I "was an atheist" (I never said I was). Another staff member also wouldn't let me sit next to any of my peers because she thought I was always dating them (I have a gf at home I am very happy with). For my first two months I did partake in unsafe behaviors, yet they didn't do much to stop me. They would watch as I would self-harm and tell me I wasn't self harming bad enough (which would trigger me more). When they found out I was SHing in the bathroom it took them 3 days to even try to keep me safe in the bathroom. I still have scars all over my arms, hands, chest, and legs due to not all staff supervising me correctly. Some staff really did care to watch us but about 3/4 would call us names and everything. The staff would also get extremely annoyed when any of us were "too hyper" or having a mental breakdown. The supervisors never listened to any of us. We would complain and complain and things would only get done if someone had a psychiatric aggressive breakdown over it. My mom was also never informed of everything. She never knew when they would increase my meds or I was SHing again. When she did try to get information they would never answer their phones and she would give up on calling. When we discharged my mom asked for records of my medical and they said no, that they don't do that anymore.Overall the communication just sucked really bad."