Veritas Collaborative's Child & Adolescent Hospital in Durham, NC

bingus

veritas honestly was an awful experience, being in treatment there affected me so badly. i came out with so much more anxiety. i dont think that ed treatment programs should threaten to take away outside time (even the measly 30 minutes this place allowed) and phone time for not getting enough points or not completing enough. my team i had there was decent, my therapist was the worst one simply because she was so new, it was obvious. there was one extremely triggering dietician who several people had problems with. some of the nurses were kind of rude but most were pretty cool. i had to ask for some earring spacers once because mine broke and it just seemed like they were mad at me for asking and being very passive agressive. the ta’s were ok, there were some really kind and all around awesome ones but the night staff were usually pretty awful with the exception of 2-3 nice ones. i had a night TA tell me “i cant do this” and walk away while i was having a panic attack. nearly all of the night staff were apathetic, rude, and seemed like they absolutely hated the job and children. another staff issue is that they would often comment on the amount of food, make comments on us and overall be kind of passive agressive towards the food we had. TAs also can be the worst at comforting someone in distress at a mealtime. A lot of the staff also talked about how much they hated their job, or if they didnt openly say they hated it they sure acted like they did. i would also like to add that this place is highly understaffed both in the nursing and TA departments. It was really common that most all TAs would call out and leave only 1 for the group which left us unable to go outside a lot and made it difficult to do activities (including going to the bathroom) and such throughout the day. More often than not the TAs had to rely on nursing to come help because there werent enough TAs and sometimes there werent even enough nurses, there was several times where me and other patients couldnt get meds because there were no nurses at the nursing station. the groups we were required to go to werent the most useful, many only taught us “skills” that wouldnt ever be useful for “distress tolerance” or triggering situations, usually we just slept. if i am highly distressed then im not gonna take the time to go through the 10 acronyms they taught us and see which one is the most useful. All of the group material can be found online. while most of the staff and the program sucked, the patients were really cool. i made some amazing friends and they made my miserable time there slightly less miserable. we played a lot of games together and had tons of inside jokes and they were all really encouraging and thoughtful. shout out to group 1 for slaying so hard

Saoirse Hyland

I’m going to be really honest about my review for here. I’m am going to start with the TA’s the good TA’s we’re amazing they were very helpful and well trained, beside that there were so many TAs that needed to be fired. Some TA’s would make comments about you food or make you feel stupid when you exspress a concern. A lot of the TA’s just made me feel unsafe. I think some therapists were very untrained and just out of college. The nurses were probably the worst out of all the staff . They would tell you how much feed you are getting among other unprofessional things. In moments where you have panic attacks a nurse is required to be there with you. Some nurses will be very aggressive and impatient with how much time it takes to calm down. Some other things are the patients most of the people I met there were amazing but some were not and that is ok because treatment is hard. Some patients would say things about food and peoples bossy. That can be a symptom of a Ed but I think that should have been taken more seriously and been worked out with their teams. Overall this place did help me a lot.

Hannah Lynch

where do i even start tbh. this place of course had it’s ups and downs first of all, many of those downsides being the absolutely terrible night TAs, including some day TAs (except for a select few of them), and the issues with phone time and points for completing meals. I would name some names, but i’m sure that’s not really allowed so i guess i’ll just keep those to myself. being a patient in this treatment center likely means that you would expect some anxiety and uneasiness around meal times and in the meal room. i noticed that sometimes other kids would have panic attacks, including myself who would be pretty down sometimes, but lemme tell you that most ALL of those TAs (i swear) have never tried to comfort someone in their life. it’s hard enough being in residential care first of all, but the fact that most TAs would just ignore you or get annoyed with you for being upset always made things worse as you could likely assume. while i was in treatment i had noticed many of the TAs not having much knowledge of eating disorders at all. triggering things would often slip out or they would make comments about meals and other stuff that just should not be said in that kind of place in the first of all. it really makes me question sometimes how much these so called TAs really know about the issue of EDs. next, of course we have the whole deal with phone time which absolutely sucked. we only earned a full 30 minutes if we could complete all of our meals throughout the day, which of course was really hard once being admitted on the first week or so. that first week was really when i needed the support of my parents and friends back at home most, but due to the whole points deal, i wasn’t allowed that option. the only thing i felt i really got out of this place was the friends that i made throughout my time here. and yes i did get their numbers so take that veratussy .

Lydia Ellis

People have a lot to say about this place, but I had a good experience. 75% of the TA’s were very caring and helpful. I had a wonderful team behind me that listened. I will say that now I am out I feel a bit “released into the wild,” but perhaps I’ll be alright. Maybe this place was bad a couple years ago, but the other reviews don’t match my experience. Maybe I was lucky, but I think others may agree.