Hampton Behavioral Health Center

Carrie Zhang

I went here in 2021. I was escaping from a difficult home situation. All I have to say is that I was stuck here for two weeks, forced to have my blood drawn by an incompetent nurse, leaving bruises on my arm. There are some nice kids who don't deserve to be there and people in bad situations, but it's just short of a prison.

T A

super bad!!! they will crank up the air conditioner to full MAX for your entire stay (three weeks - 21 days)!!! no relief at all!! they will claim that there is nothing they can do about it even when the maintenance guy is right there checking on it!!! Colder than a SUPERMAX PRISON!!! And they give you medicine that puts lumps and bumps on your skin. LAWSUITS PENDING!!!

Steve

Take me to prison next time

C

Do not trust them to do more than the bare minimum. The facility in Westhampton is understaffed and this comes through in a number of ways. They kept our family member safe during a mental health crisis but that is as positive as I am willing to be about their care. I understand that contact is limited and run through a social worker. Sometimes, families are part of the problem. We tried to keep this perspective in mind as we dealt with a number of frustrations. Our family member was with them for involuntary commitment and then transitioned through outpatient and intensive outpatient to their aftercare team. Problems we dealt with: 1) Communication was poor and sometimes unprofessional. They tend to do a lot by phone. Be careful. By phone means that there is no record of communication. Use email so you have a written record. We had some response to phone calls but quick responses to emails documenting poor communication, poor care, what we viewed as negligence, etc. 2) We shared information in confidence, we thought, to help them treat our family member. It was not held in confidence (“We have an open relationship with our patient.”) and ended up creating an adversarial dynamic at times. 3) During the involuntary stay, they let our family member go off meds despite documentation, including court order, stating that our family member was incapable of making medical decisions. There was no communication to us this was happening. I found out by accident for following up what seemed like worsening behavior. The excuse was that they could not shove the medications down their throat, which is appalling. There are many other options, including intravenous medication, that can be handled ethically. Unethical is allowing a patient’s mental health state to deteriorate, despite orders to the contrary, and risking permanent cognitive impairment. 4) Handover from the inpatient to outpatient teams was poor. The whole team changed, information was not shared between teams, and communication worsened. Because of staffing shortages, our family member no longer had a social worker. Instead, all communication was routed via a therapist who was effectively doing two jobs. 5) One of the key issues that was handled badly in the transition from inpatient to outpatient was the question of driving, which we had to raise. Our family member was too impaired to drive and thankfully the inpatient psychiatrist agreed. We agreed a plan of action, which was then contradicted by the outpatient team who received none of this information. They also made this decision based on very little contact time. My irate phone call about this issue was the only call that the outpatient psychiatrist ever returned. 6) Communication worsened further in the transition to intensive outpatient. The therapist changed. Medications were adjusted and our family member’s mental state worsened. I called three times and had only one of these calls returned, never by the psychiatrist. Our family member was not capable of providing an accurate perspective of their mental state, which they should have known by then. They were masking. We could have shared how had the team engaged with us at all. 7) Thankfully, all of these issues have been picked up by the aftercare team and are part of ongoing treatment. 8) One aspect of communication from the outpatient team that was helpful was advice about setting up the aftercare team. Because of good advice, we had support in place by discharge. In summary, they kept our family member safe, administered their medications (mostly), and provided structured programs that gave us time for the medications to work. Given the choice again between Hampton and trying to manage this ourselves at home, we would choose Hampton. Given the choice between Hampton and somewhere else, we would most likely try somewhere else.