Allina Health Mental Health – Abbott Northwestern Clinic

“I don’t know how this place hasn’t been shut down yet, or how Kimberly Anne Wight still has a job. Her overall demeanor was incredibly similar to the practitioner mentioned in my other review, only Kim isn’t a psychiatrist, despite everyone here calling her “doctor” or referring to her as such, as if it’s no difference. She’s an N.P., and compared to a couple decent N.P.s I’ve had in the past, it’s hard to believe she holds even those credentials. It would take me HOURS to go into detail on the rampant issues, negligence, and incompetence experienced here, and maybe I will come back some day to do so, but it’s still too irritating to even recall this cartoonishly horrendous ordeal. I just wanted to add my experience to hopefully spare a few people from ending up in the same nightmare. Many of the issues here were so egregious, it would sound like I’m making them up. Some issues have already been mentioned by other reviewers, but there were FAR more insidious things going on here that would sound unbelievable or like the rantings of a lunatic, which is no doubt why they’re able to get away with the stuff they’re doing here. Having been to a handful of hospitals, I had the best (or least worst) experience with FairView, for anyone looking. They don’t infantilize their patients like Abbott does, and they actually help get them what they need with meds and any community support before discharge. At FairView, I was actually included in the decision making process and was never forced to take meds against my will as I was at Abbott…meds that cause akathisia so bad it makes one want to end one’s self just to make the anguish stop. This was all explained to Kim, but she didn’t care. She put me on a med I told her I already had experience with that led to severe and unbearable side effects. After it was administered at Abbott, within an hour my whole body suddenly started itching so bad all over it made me want to tear my skin off. When I found out there were two other options I had never tried, I suggested we try one of those. She shut down the conversation with a weirdly childish meltdown, fuming at me, “Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Completely unprofessional and unethical, given that I was being forced against my will to take what was effectively one of THE worst poisons to my body that makes me appear completely crazy due to the side effects driving me insane. Had I refused that, they would have forcibly injected me with it, and there would have been no way to avoid the insanity it would have induced for the month or so that an injection lasts. The woman is either evil, or so inept that there’s no significant difference between the two in terms of the lasting damage she is causing due to her ignorance and inflated ego. At Abbott, all they did over the SIX weeks they kept me here was immediately pull me off ALL the meds I was on, force me to go though protracted withdrawal symptoms from meds that need to be tapered down slowly, INCLUDING a benzodiazepine, which any halfway decent professional knows can potentially be fatal, literally. After taking me off the cocktail of meds that had been painstakingly arrived at via trial and error over a decade of 50 different meds from different practitioners and hospitals including the Mayo, this place started me on ONLY Melatonin, and for days they were weirdly trying to convince me it was some kind of miracle drug that would solve everything. Completely bonkers. As an aside, with most of the of the rest of the staff here, they were courteous and kind, aside from a few bad apples that were incredibly aggravating. The groups here were a helpful way to pass the time (honestly, the groups were the most helpful part, and the best of any other hospital I’ve been to, including Mayo). If Abbott had competent people in charge of the crucial components needed to run an inpatient hospital, such as a having a solid understanding of the potent pharmaceuticals they administer, discharge, financial support, housing (which was also abysmal), this would have been a much higher rating.”

“My old therapist tried to limit and pigeonhole me based on her own presumptions which she was highly vocal about. I was at a vulnerable spot. My new therapist has shown me I am extroverted with social anxiety. My old one, here, thought I had autism and introverted personality. She based this solely on interactions during therapy, not on my reports of receiving energy from social situations and different behavior outside the vulnerable realm of a therapist's office. She was also not qualified to make an ASD diagnosis as she was not a doctoral level practitioner. I have found now I am an extrovert, have been engaged, though it didn't work out, working well as a therapist, and doing speed dating articulately. None of this would have happened if I had consigned myself to that habitat of sociality. It's a point of caution for her and other practitioners: do not mistake your personal judgements for clinical assessment and trying to help. Overall, she has been an effective therapist for others it would seem, and was mostly effective for me, despite that particular issue.”

“My husband was there and they would blame everything on the family when he has a cognitive brain injury and needed the right medication. He was there longer he should have been. Very scary how they manipulated him.”

“My sister went here for mental health treatment. They treat their patients like they are prisoners. How is anyone with depression supposed to recover when all they do is lock them in a concrete room all day and have to nurse check in on them once a day where they rate their feelings on a scale? I have paper records of what they do to their patients in there and trust me this is not the place to go to if you want to recover from mental health issues. My sister ended up passing away. Maybe if she was given proper treatment from this facility rather than being locked up in a cell it would’ve been a different outcome. She wasn’t a crazy schizophrenic person she only had depression and this facility can’t even help with that.”