Penn Psychiatry Pennsylvania Hospital — Mental health service in Philadelphia, PA

If you are suicidal or experiencing a scary episode DO NOT GO HERE.

If you are suicidal or experiencing a scary episode DO NOT GO HERE. I was admitted and I witnessed things that were more inhumane than the average unpleasant and scary psych ward. The staff were colluding to not give a confused older man his food for the day (they kept both his lunch and dinner), I was laughed at while hearing voices and laughed at when I asked them to explain paperwork waiving patient rights that I needed explained. This is not a good, compassionate, or even medically beneficial place to be. The nurse, Diane, an older white lady with blondish hair, I will mention by name because we all need to avoid people like this when we are vulnerable. She laughed while I was terrified, hearing voices, and her cruel behavior could have caused my suicide. Don’t let that be you. You will not be taken care of here, you are better off on the streets.

I have a brother who is in inpatient care receiving care at the psychiatric center. The care team Physician could not even answer questions on lithium drug interactions with alcohol. This physician also seemed to not really know him, or have observed him, for extended periods of time. They even explicitly stated they were letting him go sooner than he needed because of insurance not wanting to pay for more days, even though he needs more care and cannot care for himself. They told us to just involuntarily admit him if he has a “crisis” in the future. When we spoke today over the phone he showed obvious signs of his illness, which seems exactly the same as it was when he was admitted, and all they did was increase his medical dosage because he seemed “agitated”. They are still releasing him despite seeing his episode clear as day today, while on the medication. He has a history of medication non-adherence and is psychotic and has memory loss and refuses to accept his diagnosis and yet they somehow think he will be willing to take his medication outside of the care of a doctor who forces him to. It feels like they’re just churning out patients to bill insurance, and then kick them out as soon as they arbitrarily determine them to be “stable” which really means: they care only for as long as they can bill the insurance. I’ll caveat that with the fact that some people here care, usually security and phone answering staff, and those people go out of their way to do non-standard things to make sure they pass on information or call families to get more information, but many do not. There’s a big communication issue between different departments and they don’t seem to pay very much attention to patients beyond they’re arbitrary “stabilization”.