UAB Center For Psychiatric Medicine

worst place if you cant afford good insurance....just got a phone call about my daughter...its been two years and 2 times at uab 4 times at childrens and 1 time at grandview and everytime they keep her for 5 days and they release her saying that they cant keep her and there is no place to put her they excepts medicaid,,,understand she is an extreme self harm chils 13 years old with over 200 cutts,,,they just told me either give her to dhr and they can put her in a place witch ill lose my daughter or bring her home and one day she will probably succeed in killing herslf...she has said that sence her mother passed away she wants to die and they refuse to help other than 5 days and they let her go....im at my witts end on begging for help with my child and now i either give her up or i loose her.....a billion dollar hospital and they dont care unless you have good insurance..its all about money money money....they dont care about a child with probably the worst case of self harm in alabama

I went here in July stayed for 2 weeks. I feel this is one of the better psych wards. Most of the nurses were nice beside one nurse Kristian. She was very rude and inconsiderate to people's emotions. Why work at a psychward of your gonna be mad when people cry or are upset? They also went through are stuff with no warning one girl even said her panties were on the floor. I met good people in there but I would not recommend being friends once you get out because it can be very toxic. The food was good but they got our order wrong a lot and sometimes they wouldn't even get our food and we would have to wait hours to eventually get it. Also I feel there was some favoritism to certain patients because one person can get away with having there mask down, drinking in the common room, or even dating in the hostpital, which is crazy to me. The doctors are pretty nice but they seemed in a hurry to get me out of there even though I didn't feel totally good about going home. They did change my medicine and it has helped. The social workers are super nice! the groups were fun and gym was great too. I liked how we were out of our rooms most the time socializing or playing games. Overall it was a pretty chill place.

Well my 27 year old daughter was here, and yesterday they told her she was going to go home and be checked out, and to call for a ride. So she calls me and after my 2 hour drive to get there, they tell her that if she wants prescriptions fir meds she needed she would have to wait and check out the following morning. She said, no not after my mom already drove out here, my second complaint is, my daughter was out of it from a concussion the first few dsys so when she called me she didn’t give me a code, to be able to call her back. And when the hospital first called me they didn’t tell me anything about needing a code to call back my daughter. So the next day i was not ablle to speak to my daughter on the phone without the “code” and no one was able to tell me how she was because of hippa violation worries so i was quite worried and wondered well what would happen if she spiralled downhill and i woukdnt know?? But thankfully she did call me the day after that.

i am 14 for reference
i went to uab for attempting suicide and was there for 10 days. the actual hospital once i was admitted was nice, the staff are genuinely good people and seem to care. some staff are rude and inconsiderate but that’s to be expected and happens everywhere. it’s my second time being there and i will say it has helped me a lot. especially with coping and actually being safe enough to go home and not end my life. the only complaint i have is that you have to go through the er to be able to be admitted to any psychiatric ward and i waited for 4 days in the er waiting for a bed. it was a pain. when i got a bed in the ward it was like a sigh of relief but it made my stay feel so much longer and it made me extremely home sick.

My spouse was admitted here despite being discharged by a doctor already, and then held until an entirely different doctor could evaluate and discharge her. Horrible miscommunication that led to my wife being unable to come home and go back to work.

Jessie Odell in regards to our autistic son George.

Well we were singing dr Kathrine sherry Freeman’s praises until we had to burry my granddaddy today who had been sick with cancer. Our son was in her care, and after checking him in, our granddaddy took a turn. I called Dr Kathrine freeman to advice we would be checking our son out for the funeral so he could say goodbye to the only granddaddy he has ever known since he is adopted. Dr Kathrine Freeman said she wouldn’t advise that. I told her I appreciated her advice but we’d still be taking our son to the funeral as that is what families do in Alabama. Evidently she isn’t from the south? She had already explained her it was her opinion that my son didn’t understand anything. My son is autistic with a low iq. He understands just fine, the issue is figuring out how he processes things. On top of her calling Alabama’s dhr supervisor in an attempt to block me from taking our son, she also attempted to issues an AMA (against medical advice) which could cause our insurance company to
Reject the charges, and refused to send any prescriptions for the mental health drugs my son receives. When your child
Has been on mental health drugs for more
Than a week or so it’s very dangerous to stop them cold turkey. Luckily our family physician is able to help us so my son wouldn’t suffer from withdrawal symptoms, such as seizures and other issues. I fear for the safety of other children at this facility under her care who’s parents may not have the means to reach out to a trusted family dr to help in the event she does this vindictive, and unprofessional behavior to someone else’s child.

About the time my granddaddy’s service was over today she had her secretary call our cell phone to inform us that since we removed our son from the hospital she would no longer be able to work with us and took it upon herself to cancel all my son’s appointments at Ireland Center.

Mrs Ireland has been a friend to my family for years and this isn’t the kind of legacy for helping children she would have chosen to leave behind.

It appears this dr seems to miss the point that the parent is the one who makes decisions. Dr’s are hired to (advise), this doesn’t mean we will always agree with what they advise. Especially when the death of a loved one is concerned. At this point we are now filing a formal complaint with the Alabama Board to review this Dr’s lack of professionalism and dangerous practice of dropping a patient without necessary mind altering medications.

I’m really disappointed that she turned out not to be the caring dr we thought her to be and instead a very dangerous one.

Jessie Odell

i just got out of this hospital about 3 weeks ago for attempting suicide, and it was the second psych ward ive been to, my 3rd time going to one. i will say compared to the other hospital i went to this one was pretty great. it actually made a difference in my life and, although there were incidents where other patients went off the wall and got into arguments (i have ptsd from domestic violence and abuse so that gave me anxiety attacks) i know that we all had our own problems and other than that everything was fine. there were one or two nurses that didn't have the best attitude and came off rude, but the majority seemed very caring and actually talked to the kids like we were actual humans which seems to be rare in places like that. the occupational therapy we did was really useful and taught us to occupy our minds with things we enjoy doing and saved all the personal talk for the therapist/doctor. i can honestly say i learned a lot from this facility :)