Caron Treatment Centers (Adolescent Primary Care Treatment)

This organization truly knows what they are doing !!

My friend dissapeared after a four week stay here. Gone. Without a trace! Help, does anyone else have a similar situation?

I am a physician who had a son as an inpatient adolescent in this facility. Not only did they NOT help him, they erroneously diagnosed him, allowed him to manipulate the staff into thinking he was the perfect patient and was doing beautifully while at the same time he was increasing his education from the other adolescents of smuggling drugs into the facility under the noses of the staff and learning better skills in drug usage. They also overmedicated him to the point where he was experiencing Parkinsonian type of severe side effects which affected his bodily movements as well as his speech and thought processes. Prior to his admission a renowned psychiatrist from NY stated his admission should be an emergency because he had suicidal thoughts and was depressed along with a diagnosis of bipolar as well as drug use. The admitting staff informed me his stay would be covered by his insurance which it did not end up covering to the tune of almost $35,000.00. In addition, when the insurance company reviewed my son's medical records, there was no mention of the need for his admission to an inpatient program which confirmed to the insurance, that his stay was unnecessary. If it was so unnecessary why did Caron feel my son should remain an additional three months for more inpatient therapy? When he came out of the facility, he immediately reverted to everything he was doing and more, dropped out of school, and had to be admitted to two more rehabs with the final one being a wonderful facility which turned the corner for him. He is productive, working full time as well as going back to school and is a changed person. His insurance covered everything in both other facilities. Therefore, as a physician and one who truly cares about her patients, I would say that Caron is a fraudulant institution that exists merely to make money off of other people's miseries and should be reviewed by competent people to see if they really should be treating individuals at all. Hippocratic oath indeed---when it comes to Caron it should be hippocritic!

I cannot recommend Caron to anyone after what happened to my 19 year old daughter. We only got her there for the assessment and planned to extend for the full month once that was over. On a conference call with her and the therapists on Tuesday, they recommended the full month stay and my husband and I agreed. She then had a severe anxiety attack and they called an ambulance--upon her return they parked her in detox and called us to say they couldn't handle an attack like that. (Honestly? At a place that claims expertise in dual diagnosis?) They said they would look for a more psychiatric place with a program. They spoke to us about SP in MD and I asked several times if they were speaking of the Retreat program there and they indicated they were so I agreed. Just as she was being put in the car Friday evening to take her there they indicated that it was SP's co-occurring units disorder and insurance would cover five days. We were beside ourselves, but she was off. SP could not confirm she was there for over 24 hours when our daughter finally called us last night. SP's co-occurring unit is in a seedy acute psychiatric facility where the city dumps homeless people who have shown up in the ER and are deemed to be a danger to themselves. Caron likewise just dumped our daughter there, giving us the impression they had found a long-term premiere alternative. They failed to have my daughter sign a release so SP could talk to us (and confirm where she was), nor to Caron itself--what did they care? They just got rid of a patient they didn't want. How do you go from recommending a month of treatment to dumping someone in an acute facility that is by nature short term and aimed at an entirely different category of patient? We visited our daughter today, Sunday, and tried to get her out but it proved impossible as the doctor hasn’t seen her. We will go tomorrow and take legal action if she is not released. In some sense we may have been lucky Caron dumped her. Her report of Caron is that is chaotic. Drugs were being smuggled in, patients were having sex, and fights broke out regularly. Kids purposely injure themselves so they have to be taken to the hospital where they hope to be able to call their parents. Outgoing letters are censored for any negative mention of treatment at Caron. She met people there who had not seen a therapist the entire month. No matter how the patients did, they were all recommended to go to Caron Renaissance in Florida. For our daughter’s “assessment” she was seen ten minutes by a doctor and another ten by the psychiatrist. Patients were taken off all their meds, including SSRIs, and some had very adverse reactions. She was taken off all her (nonpsych meds) including her allergy medication. They had asked us to bring all her medication with her. Apparently, they were all immediately dumped in the trash, including the new sealed bottle of Allegra I thoughtfully provided, so when she finally comes home she will not have meds she is taking for gastrointestinal and musculoskeletal problems and we will have to place many calls to replace the prescriptions. And now we have to figure out how to piece together treatment at home–which we had tried to do before but were really struggling–the reason we sent her to Caron in the first place. I cannot imagine how this could have turned out worse.