Wellspring

I have been wanting to write something like this for years. I was at Angelus House about 12 years ago. I am a trauma survivor and the first thing that Dave the therapist did was to shame me in front of the rest of the group who were strangers. Trauma survivors have specific needs and they were not met here. They have little understanding and use their tough love method on everyone. I felt like I was in jail and all I received was knowing I could survive something so bad. It was not an environment which uplifted me but one where I felt belittled. I made it through but others were not so lucky. A few people left in the night and I was jealous. To be clear you will be expected to dig up tree roots and clear trails and scoop goat poop. And if you are actually human and have thought you are considered to be difficult. You learn how to adapt to get through but it’s not healing. There were younger people having affairs in the house and people were hoarding foods and feeding their eating disorders. There is no treatment for trauma survivors. They did not even mention it. EMDR PC and Somatic experiencing are known to help. This place is missing a piece. The nurse as not kind as well. Just so glad to be out there and feeling good to share with others. I wouldn’t recommend it to my enemy

My daughter is presently at Wellspring since Jan 2014. There are several components; there is a 19 room house for adolescents along with a smaller house for younger children adjacent to the Arch Bridge School which has about 45 total students thru grade 12. On their website, you can see the different diagnoses they treat. The review the previous post is on and the one I will give is for the Angelus house a few miles away, which is for max of 10 adults, which has changed to only house females. My daughter is 18 and the other 6 females with her are ages 18 – 26 y, one even a college grad. My daughter attends the Arch Bridge School in the morning to finish up high school. Wellspring has helped my daughter tremendously. She has been to other short term residentials for her eating disorder which got under control before she got there. She was still was unable to function in a smaller alternative high school so we were lucky to have found this facility, which is on the NY School approved list of residential placements so school districts will pay. As in any mental health facility, there are some staff that some residents may not click with. Presently, there is no one name «Sally» that the previous reviewer wrote about. This house and one for adolescents are on farm land with sheet, goats, pigs. and part of their responsibilities is taking care of them along with house chores and cooking. The therapy here is different, lot of group therapies, and what really helped my daughter is «expressive» therapy, whether it’s looking in a mirror and talking about what you see to hitting a large foam box. There is also art therapy, REIKI therapy, yoga, weekly bowling, outings to nature centers, Starbucks, flea market, etc. The mental work is tough, they really challenge them. The new psychiatrist tries to wean them off meds and the program really tries to get them to get to the root of their issues. I would highly recommend Well Spring.

This is a long review because I’ve harbored feeling against this place for several years now. I lived in the adult house, Angelus, for about 8 months. I left in early 2009 and continue this day to have nightmares about the place. From the beginning, the amount of smack talk the patients and staff engaged in was alarming. If they talk crap about several patients and their problems in such an unproductive and judgmental way, it raises the question why wouldn’t they do that about you.
I was continually forced to go to AA meetings, the belief that I was an alcoholic was continually shoved down my throat. This was despite me adamantly challenging this view, and continually stating that I felt guilty for being there when I couldn’t relate to any of the struggles and feelings of powerlessness the addicts expressed. I started to believe them for a short while, but then paid attention to the facts and my natural feelings (not the ones they told me I had) and persisted in resisting the mandated meetings. After perhaps 5 months or so they gave up trying to force me to go. Today, I am not an alcoholic or an addict. I share 1 – 2 bottles of wine per week with my girlfriend. Their forcing this process on me caused a lot of anger, angst, made me doubt/​distrust myself, and left me feeling incredibly unheard.
Additionally, the staff member in charge of all SA/​AA activities was stupidly unfit to be in a therapeutic environment. Sally, was her name I believe. She was almost always aggressive and unapproachable with her tone and body language. Seeming as though she were on a pedestal, she was always right in her eyes which made us all ignorant, dumb, and wrong. She loved to talk crap about other patients, scoffing at them with pleasure. Rides to AA were filled with smack talk about other patients, sometimes started by Sally, and in no way discouraged.
Sally was also very directly discouraging of me in regards to a transition I started while at Angelus. A transition that saved my life and gave me the opportunity to be happy and healthy today. Uninvitedly telling me her opinion of how what I was doing was wrong, in so many ways.
As for the art therapist, Michelle, she fabricated written notes about me and gave no room to develop a healthy relationship with her. I took accountability for being an oppositional brat the first month or two of being in art therapy, as I thought she was less than intelligent, didn’t like her, and was not interested in following the forced strict guidelines of her program. After I decided to give in an give it a go, she continued harboring the resentments towards me and wrote notes about me continuing to intentionally try provoking her (I wasn’t at all, and I was doing the assigned tasks to the fullest without complaining). She wrote that I was malicious towards other patients, which was not observed by any other staff members and not reported by other residents. She allowed her personal shit to significantly affect her professionalism. Wtf? And I wouldn’t have cared, because I still didn’t have respect for her, but these notes are shared with all the therapists and that skewed the way they perceived me and led to an infuriating talking to. It got cleared up, because the notes were in fact false, but this made my tolerance for art therapy even less. And although I love doing arts and crafts in my own time, I now hold a lot of anger towards the idea of doing art therapy because of my so strongly negative experience here, which is a shame.
I did not find this place to be nurturing or feel like an emotionally safe place. I did not feel supported or heard. When I experienced confusion about how I could help my self progress I was simply shamed, told I wasn’t working hard enough, or ignored. Here, I was forced to stick up for myself relentlessly. Fighting who they told me I was, with who I knew I was. Not the way I had hoped it’d bring me growth.
Still, this was better than living at home at the time so I stayed.
There were a couple staff members that I felt supported by, safe with, and guided by– Deb and Jo. I know Jo stopped working there around the time I left. She made me feel comfortable with who I was and really made a difference in my life and perspectives.
The lead therapist, Dave, would without consent say things in group that I’d talk about in private sessions with him. He seemed to have a god complex and I rarely felt heard by him. It aggravated me that I rarely got to speak with him, and was instead assigned to the female therapist most the time, Sarah, who made a terribly immature first impression on me and didn’t grow to impress me. I expressed wanting to talk to Dave, but request denied. Even after it was very clear that I didn’t have an interest in working with Sarah.
Bottom line– I would discourage anyone from living here or sending their young adult children here. I can’t speak to if the adolescent unit is any better. Traumatizing experience. Can’t trust the place at all.