Child Mind Institute

"CMI has been very instrumental in my daughter’s experiences with anxiety ! Be prepared to pay a hefty penny for services… but if you have out of network insurance it can help a lot !!"

"Worst experience ever. Totally unprofessional. I’m not the only one to have a horrible experience there, read the reviews and ask around. CMI is only involved in making money and marketing themselves. The psychologist they provide has a slew of horrible reviews, he lied to us about his communications with my son and got caught. He panicked, his response was rude, he lashed out against us and acted as if he was lying about our son for our best interests!!! I’d be surprised if he still has his license to practice, he was demeaning to my kids mom and really just had an awful experience being in the same room as him, not what you want for your kid. It appears that CMI has young recently graduated staff that has zero experience, background check them for yourself. They push meds on your child at the cost of your child’s health and say it’s fir their benefit. I would not be surprised that CMI is funded by the same people that fund big pharmaceutical companies and this is basically their way of “selling “ their products. As much as they smile at you, know that they not only don’t care about your children, they want to enslave them into a life of drug addiction, and will never be honest about their true intentions. All the while trying to make you feel inadequate to raise your own kids, then making horrible decisions for your child. Absolutely a nightmare."

"We had a negative experience with Child Mind Institute without ever having a child seen! The Child Mind Institute screens/ does intakes via the phone by a staff person who may be on opposite coast and may not be a licensed clinician. In our case she seemed to be a schedulers. After a brief conversation this person supposedly “matches” you with a clinician. I had to specifically ask to talk to the clinician and was limited to 15 min. Then you must start paying for three assessments. The assessment sessions make sense— after a clinician and parent have had enough of a conversation to determine if your child is a good fit for their practice and vice versa. At Child Mind, this is not possible. Then you are asked to complete lengthy assessment forms and to sign the strangest therapy consent form I’ve ever seen ( I’m trained as a MFT in CA). In the consent form you are asked to give permission for your child’s case to be used for advertising purposes. They also want to be able to connect with your friends (that seemed weird — meaning social media? Why would I want my friends to be contacted by my child’s therapist?). They also want permission to contact previous therapists, teachers, pediatricians etc. we did not want to give a blanket agreement to any of these disclosures or contacts without separate specific permission based on conversation with the Child Mind Institute therapist. This is not at all uncommon, but they decided that they would not see our child after we did not give blanket consent to their advertising clause, friends” clause, or to contact other free. We then received an email saying that we were not a good fit and any appointments made were cancelled. This was a after numerous emails with the intake scheduler, a 15 min conversation with two therapists a year apart— because it took that long for someone to be available. It’s all been a terrible waste of time. The disclosure consent framework should be explained up front before any parent waits a year for a clinician. It’s possible they could do decent treatment, but if your child is functioning well except for some anxiety issues or even OCD— do not use Child Mind. They seem to care more about marketing g and making money than explaining what they do to parents who inquire. I’m left thinking it’s a racket of some kind since they completely balked when we did not give blanket consent. Most good but therapist will accept your limits about who they may contact and accept your desire for confidentiality for your child and family and are actually bound by their license in California to respect these wishes. I Do not recommend the Child Mind Institute because they will summarily cancel your appointments if you do not consent to all they ask. Request to see a consent form up front and read it carefully before signing it."

"I made an intake appointment twice. The woman on the phone said “Tomorrow at 11:00 am.” I did not receive a call at 8:00 am (my time) or at 11:00 am my time on that day. I called and spoke to someone else on the phone who then gave me another intake appointment the day after at 9:00 am my time. I did not receive a call by 9:20 am and called to leave a message. I still have not received a response and it’s 1.5 hours later. Thankfully I was able to find someone in my network taking new patients and so I will not use Child Mind’s services. Just very sad the hoops that people need to jump through just to get mental healthcare for themselves and family members and something like this can be defeating. Do not recommend."