Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center Chicago

Jan 26th, 2024

PHP and IOP were excellent with compassionate staff and effective long-term skills.
Nov 3rd, 2023

I wouldn't even give this place one star. Theodore Weltzin is the lead psychiatrist and an awful person. I was suicidal and flew to Chicago to admit to Pathlight. I was there less than a few hours and Weltzin came into a room where I was sleeping in bed and starting firing accusations at me that I was high on drugs, which was completely false. He was arrogant and egotistical. I had worked years to stop using drugs and alcohol and to be accused in a depressive state, I felt beaten down. I begged for my things, including my phone so I could call family and leave the facility immediately. I needed paperwork signed by Weltzin to be discharged and he made me sit for more than hour until he "had the time." I had to fly solo from Chicago back to PA the same day, while still wanting to commit suicide. This is negligent and unacceptable on so many levels. Do not admit here.
Aug 4th, 2023

My out-patient pyschologist recommended this place believing it would help me develop additional coping skills. After 1 week, I have decided to check myself out. This place is not worth my time or money and is beyond triggering. On day 1, their in-patient therapist was absent in a foreshadowing of events. So, a substitute sat in her place. While processing personal trauma, they abruptly pulled me out of class ("group support"). Later that day, they facilitated a class of their own only to get in my way of supporting others. I eventually complained about them, but nobody offered a solid way for getting my concerns addressed. From what I have learned, other patients have had similar complaints, yet Pathlight is doing nothing to address this. Uncoordinated to say the least, most facilitators need more training. Classes are introduced as ambiguous acronyms. Descriptions for each class to identify the name of the class, its purpose (in terms of patient placement), and the facilitator's name are all needed. The basic communication gap could be fixed by providing a handout (or legend) displaying each acronym alongside the full name. However, at least one team-psychologist ("facilatator") has stated that they do not want to create more handouts. On day 3, their technology failed resulting in an hour of my time wasted. In terms of peer-to-peer and patient-to-clinician interactions, explicit guideliness are NOT provided. Yet, they are quick to call out patients whom they subjectively accuse of using "triggering language." The administrative assistant at the front desk, the one with the dreadlocks, is not approachable and oversteps her boundaries. After learning that she went behind my back to negatively talk smack about me over a benign comment that was made, I learned the hard way. She is untrustworthy. Their art therapy room is held in the lunchroom. It's poorly stocked, and the art supplies are subpar. They have color pencils but no sharpeners, thread but no needles, paper but no scissors and/or glue. Considering their drab lunch presentation (vegetarian was requested but pork was served), I'm not surprised. Individuals with differing mental health needs (e.g., ADHD, alcoholism, anxiety, depression and etc.) are placed in the same room for classes. This makes it difficult to have meaningful conversations. It's also awkward to process and/or share experiences with others when we do not share similar struggles. On day 4, an ADHD-patient threw a fit of rage because other peers, including the facilitator, laughed at him. Some of their classes are poorly facilitated. Some instructors are better trained than others. The better ones allow all patients to share their experiences without allowing others to dominate the floor. The better ones also encourage ALL patients, and NOT just their favorite ones, to hold the floor. The bias was often very evident and very off-putting. When other facilitators just allowed us to sit in silence for processing, I wondered how this was supposed to be therapeutic. My assigned psychologist was given the benefit of the doubt. They were absent on my first day which made my experience less than great. Lately, they keep stating that they're my advocate, but so far I've been the only person advocating for myself. In terms of their professionalism, I am beginning to question it. Their apparent presumptuousness does not make for a good therapist. Taking a Freudian approach to psychoanalysis is also not very helpful. They assigned a therapeutic handout for my completion; however, we never discussed its contents. The last time I met up with them, I noticed that they apparently failed to recap our session via my patient portal. Final note. Beware when walking into the building. The security guard has an attitude problem and is aggressive. She rolled her eyes at me on my first day given their entry protocol (an entry code). Their lack of signage only made things worse. Others have complained about her, yet again; Pathlight is doing nothing.
Jan 30th, 2024

TLDR: Food was unsafe with terrible portion size and low quality; many staff were extremely rude; there was a theft problem; extremely disorganized especially in rules; and this place is on the road to a lawsuit with the fact that patients have easy access to "sharps" at any time they want. Positives: It's very LGBTQ-friendly; a small amount of the staff are very kind; the snacks are good; and the Monday groups on addiction are the best groups I've been in for a while. But honestly, these positives are not enough to outweigh all of the cons. First issue: the food we were served was disgusting, and this is coming from someone who tried a lot of hospital food in the past. Some of the chicken was undercooked, some meat tasted like dog food, someone found black dust in their vegetable soup, and someone got food poisoning from eating there. On top of that, the portion sizes were sometimes awful. For dinner in my first week, several people got a tiny slice of steak smaller than the slices of cheesecake served at Barnes and Noble and a small side salad about the size of a short coffee cup. There were many other instances of this, but this is the most memorable to me, and meals of these sizes were served to people with eating disorders. It was extremely common to find hair and bugs in our food with several people finding something (usually hair) in their food every week. Biggest complaint: Many of the staff were extremely rude. While I had a few very good experiences with the staff listening to me and my needs, many others were very unprofessional and/or rude. When I asked for something else to go with my tiny steak and salad dinner, a staff rolled her eyes at me. Additionally, several other patients and I lost a friend who unexpectedly died. Since we all met in this hospital, the staff didn't tell us due to HIPPA laws and we only found out from others in PHP. (Despite this, the staff could have gone through records to see who was in the hospital at the same time as the patient to find out who to tell.) The main problem with this was that we were not allowed to talk about our grief unless it was with a staff one-on-one. (Personally, the staff were the last people I wanted to talk about the grief with because they kept this information from us.) Someone was scolded for hugging someone crying from grief because it was a "caretaking activity" and no other alternative for comfort was given. Whenever we were sad and upset over this, our emotions were completely invalidated by the staff. It was easy to tell that many of the staff did not care about us at all. For example, some staff that were supposed to be watching over us were focused on other activities like their phone instead of us. Some of the staff act like we're a nuisance when we ask for a need like just using the bathroom. As for theft, it was common for people to get electronics stolen from them. Someone got his phone taken and said a staff lied by saying they already gave it to him. Luckily he got it back after almost a week, and the explanation was that "it was in his luggage." Other than that, at least 7 people got their chargers stolen. We were told that the staff would talk to us about this issue in 2 days, but as far as I know, they never did. There were security cameras right next to the electronics case where our chargers were, but only 2 people got theirs found. Next is that the management is insanely disorganized. One staff member will tell you a rule; like you can't talk about the fact you have depression, while other staff members will be completely fine with you saying the same thing. I got scolded for using my phone during dinner, even though someone at the same table across from me was doing the same thing with their phone blatantly face up on the table in front of the same staff scolding me. I never saw my doctor actually inside the facility (he was over Zoom) and it showed when he didn't know how the facility worked. Ex: He said that supplements do not count for meal completion when they do; and thought that workers come into our rooms to check us while we sleep when they don't and use security cameras outside our rooms instead. Some of us got orientation, but others didn't. Orientation still wasn't thorough enough because I still got in trouble for breaking an important rule that nobody even told me existed. Additionally, the staff doesn't tell patients about the rules, the patients learn from other patients or learn from breaking the rules. I cannot trust what the staff say because some lie and some are just misinformed. One of my roommates had a medical condition that made it hard for them to sleep at night and needed their own room. But we were told that there were no individual rooms open. At least 4 other patients had individual rooms and some came AFTER my roommate did. The others had good reasons for having a single room, but my roommate also had a good reason because sleep deprivation can greatly affect recovery. One patient was recovering from an addiction and experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms. To the point where they were in a wheelchair, vomiting at the dinner table, and carrying trays of vomit through the hallways. I do not blame the patient at all since they were too sick; I blame the staff because this program was not equipped for withdrawal treatment and the staff should have known their limits. Some people found it triggering to see someone vomiting, and while I don't find it triggering to me, I still agree that it created an uncomfortable ennviorment to see someone carrying their vomit past me. When we complain about something triggering, we are told it's an "exposure." That argument is often an excuse because we were banned from talking about almost everything that could trigger people. (Some of the rules of what not to talk about were reasonable, like don't talk about politics. But people have gotten scolded for talking about having depression or saying "apple bottom jeans"). Another thing is that we were not allowed to talk about numbers or topics that would trigger people with eating disorders, but I have seen several people who engage in eating disorder behavior and not get stopped. EX: cutting food up into small portions and wiping grease off food. As someone with an ED and knows tons of others with EDs, I guarantee you that it's much more triggering to see someone wiping grease up than to hear someone saying that they dislike eating cereal. Finally, many people are allowed to take naps, but staff forget to wake them up. So many people end up accidentally sleeping through meals or for several hours when they only planned to sleep 45 minutes. The last thing is the easy access to dangerous objects. I found a staple in my bed my first week, and some people can have "sharps" like crochet hooks that others might have restrictions on. The problem with this is that these sharps are easily accessible to other patients who might have restrictions.
Jan 6th, 2024