8thDr Who

Review of St.Joseph Healthcare Hamilton

If you can avoid this place in a mental/emotional ...

If you can avoid this place in a mental/emotional crisis, do so. Only for really big emergencies.

I went to St. Joe's emerg for the feelings of extreme anxiety because of a bad situation I'd been in for several months. The intake psychiatrist didn't believe that such an unusual situation could exist and admitted me with "delusions".

Once I was in the 9th floor mental health ward, the situation outside the hospital started to get dealt with by the appropriate authorities, which was some kind of relief.

My mother brought me documents and email printouts from the authorities about the situation. I tried to show them to the doctors, but they actually physically backed away and said they would not look at them.

About the third time my mother came to visit, three doctors "interviewed" her by cornering her in a room and rapid-firing questions at her. They asked if the situation was real, and were not happy when she said it was. My elderly mother has terrible social anxiety, and when they released her, she says she ran to the parking lot and car as fast as her arthritic legs would carry her, and had a panic attack behind the steering wheel. Because of what the doctors had done to her, she would not return.

Because she had verified that the situation was real, the doctors wrote in my health record, "Mother now shares the delusion."

Because of the doctors' extreme pressure on me, after two weeks in the hospital I agreed to take some (extremely low dose) anti-psychotics. I stopped as soon as they kicked me out into a homeless situation after just less than a month, and what do you know? The situation was still real, and still being addressed by actual people who knew what they were doing.

Years later, with the confirming documents from the investigating parties, I was able to go through the Privacy Office and get a correction on my health record. A long process but thank goodness it exists.

"Delusions" is now removed from my health record, but since that misdiagnosis informed diagnoses made by doctors during a subsequent visit to St. Joes emerg years later, the illness I then had was ignored and they put me in the psych ward again this time for hypochondria. Hypochondria? Who puts people in the psych ward for hypochondria? And even if that had been true, don't people with hypochondria get sick? Turns out it was an endocrine issue. Not hypochondria.

Then, with "Delusions" and "somatic preoccupation" (hypochondria) on my health record because of St. Joe's narcissistic psychiatrists with a God complex (and maybe some kind of personality disorder), it was very hard for me to get future (very real) health conditions looked into. I was dismissed as delusional and a hypochondriac over and over, which lead me to investigate my health records and find the misdiagnoses.

The correction process (long) was initially not enough to stop the misdiagnoses from preventing me from accessing healthcare, so I had to eventually lock my health records down through Clinical Connect. After 5 years of being dismissed by physicians who accessed my health records through Clinical Connect and saw "delusions" and "somatic preoccupation", my medical care is now being properly addressed. What a shame the pride and arrogance of the psychiatrists at St. Joes has caused so much additional work for other people.

I left feeling worse than when I'd gone in. This is what I hear from other people who have also spent time in the St. Joes psych ward. People go in with an issue, and come out with that issue as well as suicidal. They'd rather live on the street than go back.
So if you can find a way to get help elsewhere, please do so for the sake of your health. This place is a last resort only.