Honey BOO BOO, I just HATED DBT and doing the worksheets here but the movies we watched were cool. WHAT IF WE REWRITE THE STARS? SAY YOU WERE MADE TO BE MINE, NOTHING COULD KEEP US APART, YOU D BE THE ONE I WAS MEANT TO FIND!!!! THIS IS REAL, THIS IS ME, IM EXACTLY WHERE IM SUPPOSED TO BE, NOW GONNA LET THE LIGHT SHINE ON MEEE
Hey Harper.
Alright I was here for 2 months and there was no support during those 2 months so I relapsed and had no were to go because they released me without php set up so I was stuck. The TA s treat you terribly and make you feel like having an eating disorder is a punishment. Very unprofessional don t go it s a scam and will mostly Likely make your child worse because they will relapse and be worse then when they went in to Veritas.
I was here for 6months it was such a ruff time but the nurses were very helpful and helped me get through many meals.They truly cared if I was better mentally I was here in 2017 my therapist Barbra was very kind and sweet!
If I could give negative stars I would! Please parents. Find another place for your child. This is NOT a place for a child. They do not do what the handbook says, they use threats to make our child to do things. My child came out after 3 weeks with having nightmares, fears, and none of this was happening before, they do skin checks more than they say they
This place needs to be shut down. Within 2 hours of being there, they were threatening my daughter of tubing her.
This review is from 4 years ago (I post on all locations to get the word out):
i would never recommend anyone to go to veritas collaborative and i don't think i will ever be able to forget my experience there. i was a patient at veritas for 5 weeks at their durham location. i will start of by saying they will pretty much room you with anyone and guy don't have a say. treated like an inconvenience by almost every therapeutic assistant and every psychiatrist. i was 14 when i was there and was roommates with a 10 year old for most of my stay. my roommate had ARFID (she was scared to eat because she thought she would throw up) but did not understand anything about anorexia or bulimia and would say the rudest things to me. i was then roommates with another 10 year old who would constantly ask me and make remarks about my self harm and the staff would never let me switch rooms. one 19 year old there was roommates with a 10 year old as well and it was seen as no big deal. at veritas, it's really no big deal if you don't eat or refuse meals. they never force you to have an NG tube and the only time you get one is if you or your parents agree to it. there was always so much drama on the unit and staff pretty much ignored it. towards the end of my stay at veritas and before i was transferred to another facility, i was only getting worse. i was refusing every meal and having several panic attacks a day. their fix to everything was to give me sedatives to knock me out and when i woke up, more sedatives. i wasn't told in advance that i would be transferred and never even had the slightest idea. i was flown in a medical jet and was only told that i was leaving when the ambulance got there to take me to the jet. i was not allowed to say bye to any of the people that helped me through hard times and i was forced to leave during night time snack because everyone was in the kitchen and i was room ridden. they forced my dad to be there all day and would not allow him to talk to anyone. he was in a room by himself for 6 hours and was not allowed to talk to any of the other parents and he had no clue what was going on either. if you made it to the partial hospitalization program (PHP) your parents had to move down to durham and rent an apartment so your child could finish the program. most parents had to quit their jobs and leave everything so they could move from where they lived and go to durham. the average stay for a patient there from (residential and php) was about 6 months give or take a month. veritas collaborative is a for profit organization and just wants your money. the facility is almost too good to be true and it almost makes you not want to go home which is bad because that is no longer a motivator for some patients. i was transferred from veritas because i was "too much of a disruption" and they didn't know what to do with me. that was not the case though, they just wanted to protect their name. another suspicious thing, you will not find any bad review about veritas no matter how hard you search. they should not be a behavioral health/ eating disorder hospital is they are not equipped/ unable to care for every patient admitted. please look elsewhere before sending a loved one here.
My family and I will forever be grateful to the amazing team that we worked with at Veritas. You never want to see your children hurting especially when you can t make it better and on top of that when your child has to be hours away from you living with strangers for weeks it is terrifying. Our whole team was amazing and definitely put us at ease. We were in constant contact about every single thing. We were blessed to be able to work closely with Daria, our daughters Therapist. She was so sweet, and caring and is someone I am now proud to call family. Everyone we came in contact with at Veritas was great. My husband and I were able to spend time with the amazing Harriet who runs the front desk, as well as many other things, and she was so kind and genuine and a wonderful choice to have as the first person you see and speak with when you enter the facility. I understand that everyone s recovery is different and everyone is entitled to their own opinion but my family and my daughter especially had such a great experience with Veritas!
I left Veritas 6 years ago. After my human rights were violated many times, I was sedated multiple times a day for getting too upset , and I had been given a horrible concoction of psychiatric medication that sent me into a state of psychosis, I am still recovering from my stay there. Because of the lack of treatment I received, I will NEVER EVER go back to any sort of inpatient or residential facility, no matter how much I need it. I have in no way recovered from the trauma I received at Veritas. Because of Veritas ignorance with psychiatric medications, I refuse to try any new medications or let doctors mess with my medication because of incorrect concoction Veritas gave me. I was treated as a burden by most staff because on top of Anorexia, I was a self harmer and that was obviously above their level of expertise, which is none, by the way. Their way to fix/help my self harm was to sedate me probably 17 hours out of the day and not let me socialize with any of the other patients or go to any therapy groups. I never had a say in my treatment and nothing was ever explained to me. Medication was NEVER explained to me. The therapy they give is an absolute joke. Despite Veritas practically telling me I was too much to deal with and I probably would never recover, I did. And I did it WITHOUT the help of Veritas. I am begging you not to send your loved ones here. Please please please. I am still dealing with the trauma from my stay to this day. I could have sued because of how bad things were but having to deal with Veritas again is the whole reason I didn t. All they care about is money. It s quite obvious considering how nice the buildings are. There are so many treatment centers that are actually good, unlike this one. If you have read this far down, I would encourage you to scroll down to the review I left 4 years ago. It took me 2 years to be able to talk about my trauma but there is still more I can t talk about to this day. It has much more detail considering I wrote it pretty soon after everything had happened and I had finally come to terms with what I went through. But again, please don t send loved ones here. They will only get worse and I am speaking from my own experience, as well as the experiences of all the patients I was with.
Where do I begin? Most TAs were ok but a few were horrible. One TA named Tiana obviously didn't understand EDs at all and said they weren't a mental illness which I and others were offended by. For such a food centered place there was very little food variety and if a patient didn't like a certain food it was brushed aside as a behavior and they would be forced to eat it or face consequences. Patients that struggled with self harm or certain behaviors were punished instead of helped, like only being allowed a few minutes of phone time and not being allowed to go outside for patio. I'm vegetarian and I was repeatedly given meals with meat or I just wasn't given meals at all during PHP and I had to wait for someone to bring food to me, which took forever. I was very confused by some of the rules there. For example, I was put on low body movement even though my team told me I wasn't supposed to be. I was allowed out on patio but had to go inside when "outdoor rec" started even though it was the exact same thing as patio (sitting outside and not really moving). There was an extremely rude nurse named Missy that acting very petty towards me and it seemed like she was out to get me which was very strange. Most days were spent in pointless, boring groups and sitting in the common room doing nothing. Some kids struggle with restriction, which I understand, but I didn't and I made this very clear to my team. Still, everyone in my group was required to do things like write down our "challenge foods" which I felt left out patients that didn't struggle with restriction. My group started going into the meditation room for cove before bedtime and we loved this and found it very therapeutic because the TAs weren't in there with us so we could vent freely amongst ourselves. However, one TA told us we weren't allowed to do that anymore but wouldn't explain why and this frustrated everyone in the group. We also weren't allowed to use Spotify or any music streaming platforms even though me and other patients expressed how it would benefit us. We already were denied access to the internet and on top of that we couldn't listen to music! The TAs were always inconsiderately loud during sleep hygiene or bedtime and the hallway lights were so bright that I struggled falling asleep at night and other members of my group felt this way as well. We were required to have "community meetings" several times a week which were pointless because nothing would come of them and we were always told to wait until patient council which was only once a month! When patient counsel finally came along there wasn't enough time to address everything my group wanted to talk about and the therapists leading it didn't seem to care about our opinions. There was a TA named Caroline that upset and triggered many patients but nothing was ever done about her behavior. Lots of TAs were very nitpicky about portions which was triggering for some patients. Patients were allowed to bring very few clothing items and only one book so you had to wait for a family member to drop another book off instead of just bringing multiple with you. Overall, Veritas, please do better with who you hire and ACTUALLY listen to the patient's voices too (don't just pretend that you are). We're people, not just patients.
This Thanksgiving as a parent of a child currently in Veritas Collaborative Durham location, I just wanted to say Thank You to all the people that have worked with my wife and I and most importantly our child who is excelling in this program. I really wish there could be validated reviews from parents as opposed to negative reviews that may come from a small percentage of patients. In any case we are very THANKFUL for the team Veritas. This program prospers with parent and family involvement and where possible they try to involve family a lot. Just today I got a beautiful email from the dietician on a nutrition update. Our teens health has improved immensely since entering the program a month ago. You guys are doing good work.
For privacy of my teen, I did make a new account on google to post this review.
Honestly Veritas was bad. The food wasn t very good but I mean what can you expect. I had a very good experience with my therapist, Kia, however I know others did not like their therapists. The nurses were mostly kind. Buttt Nicole was very mean and seemed to hate all children for no reason. You guys need to hire better ta s. Get people who actually know what they re doing with Ed s. Most of the time people would just care about the money. Or they were way to strict and wouldn t let us even crack our backs or something. I feel they only cared about your weight. You would only get threatened with a feeding tube if you were underweight . It would be very triggering to see other people not completing but not having any consequences. DBT was not helpful and I never used any of the skills. They should allow everyone to go outside because when kept inside my Ed would be louder and I became more depressed than I ever have been. Also GET SOME BETTER EGGS. THEY ARE SO NASTY AND POWDERY YALL. Also pls allow night showers. I want to be clean when I go to bed. HIII HONEY BOO BOO
veritascollaborative.com
