Silver Hill Hospital

Similarly to a previous reviewer, I attended Silverhill’s 28 Day program, in hopes, to get off the Benzo prescription I found myself on (12mg of Xanax everyday, coupled with 2,800mg of Seroquel and a 30-pack of beer habit the staff was well aware of). No attempts were made to get me healthy. The staff maintained my objectively near fatal prescription throughout my stay. I was placed in a DBT house opposed to the dual diagnosis one because I assume the staff just found it to be too much work. I’m now ~15 years past this experience. My life and health will never be the same. I attended Silverhill out of desperation, I didn’t detox until 9 years later, one divorce and a lifetime of trauma, coupled with multiple seizures due to a combo of withdrawals. I had to do that alone and it was terrifying.
I entrusted these people with my literal existence and was met with nothing but indifference. I want to repeat that the staff found it reasonable to maintain my prescription of 12mg of Xanax. Mind-blowing.

I guess the good news is they got $40,000 out of the whole last ditch effort. I’m nonetheless left to pick up the pieces.

(Be a human, don’t give me a form response.)

I went to Silver Hill for a 4 week program in 2014 at age 29, for depression. I got a few useful things out of my stay, but I can't recommend this program.

First of all, it's incredibly expensive ($40,000 then, and I'm sure it's more now). My family is pretty well off so we could just barely afford this by making some sacrifices, but every other patient I met was EXTREMELY rich, & very entitled & prone to brag about their wealth (and frankly few of them had the humility needed to benefit from treatment). Because Silver Hill wants to keep the money coming in, patients get away with all kinds of harassment of other patients (sexual and otherwise) and nothing will be done about it. This happened to me and at least one other woman I knew.

Nearly everyone is there for substance abuse. Therefore they make EVERYONE--even if you have no substance abuse diagnosis--pee in a cup regularly with someone in the room watching you. This is not an appropriate way to treat addicts either! They deserve dignity as much as I did. You could pat someone down and then stand outside the door and accomplish the same thing.

The food is acceptable and there's a reasonable variety. However, zero snacks are provided between/after meals, and dinner is at 5:30. Since everyone else there had wealthy families who lived in the area, they were well supplied with snacks. My family lived in another state and I came up on the train with what I could carry, so I was only able to eat what people would share. (I have a condition that doesn't let me eat much in one sitting, so if I only get 3 chances to eat a day I get very hungry.) I don't expect a luxurious spread but a handful of things ought to be available, particularly for $40,000.

There was almost no individual therapy. A group setting is best for DBT, but at MINIMUM there should have been a 1 hr private session 2x/week and ideally 3x (again, considering the cost!).

The weekend programming is useless and just there to fill your time. I know most of the actual professionals don't want to work on weekends but there must be a better option.

The DBT teachers seemed to have zero training in autism and other neurodivergence. When I shared one of my self-soothing techniques of gently rubbing my forearm, she criticized me for doing something so "weird" and suggested I camouflage it by applying lotion instead. When I mentioned to her later that I felt hurt by that, she told me "I'm not going to walk on eggshells around you." This was a minor incident, but (1) I was in an extremely vulnerable space due to being hospitalized, and (2) I shudder to think what would happen to people with "weirder" stims and tics. In 10 years, this may have changed; I certainly hope it has.

This is more a problem with psychiatry generally, but there's ZERO consideration or even mention of sociological factors in mental illness. I suppose since everyone there is white and super-wealthy (and as far as I could tell, straight), issues of structural oppression and how they affect mental health were not relevant to them, nor were they interested in solutions that involved building community.

The positives:
The grounds are lovely, with lots of wild birds roaming around. You have enough free time to walk around.

The exercise facilities are good & varied.

The housing is perfectly nice.

There was a reasonable amount of internet access (social media blocked, which is good). I was allowed to call anyone I wanted and speak privately.

The DBT classes, aside from the issue mentioned above, were truly helpful. Keeping the diary card and discussing it regularly really focuses you and reminds you to use the techniques. I'm a HUGE supporter of DBT, not just for BPD but for many emotional disorders.

Overall, I got some benefit out of my stay at Silver Hill, and it wasn't a deeply terrible experience, but it was ultimately outweighed by the harassment from other patients that staff did nothing about, the near-total lack of individual therapy, and to a lesser degree the insufficient availability of food and insensitivity to neurodivergence.

I had a negative experience at Silver Hill’s Argent Program (an intensive 10-day testing/assessment program geared towards providing diagnostic clarity and treatment recommendations). Before entering the program, I had received conflicting diagnostic information from providers, some who confidently diagnosed me with OCD and others who told me I didn’t have OCD at all. Therefore, going in I was hoping Argent would assist in providing some clarity in this area as well as identify any other areas of concern with my mental health. This really didn’t end up happening, and during my stay I experienced the following concerns:

-When I arrived, I was under the impression that most of my day would be filled with a variety of different diagnostic assessments and tests. However, only about 2-3 hours of my day were spent in testing, while the rest of the day consisted of unstructured downtime. Given that the program was advertised as intensive, I was very underwhelmed by the amount of actual testing that was completed during my time there.

-Because of the supposed comprehensive nature of the program, I was also disappointed by the lack of physical health testing done during my time there. While a very high-level neurological exam and basic lab work were completed, no other additional health tests were conducted to determine if other biological factors may be contributing. I thought I’d be given an MRI, get tested for Lyme Disease, receive a more comprehensive lab panel, etc.

-I think for me the biggest misstep that Silver Hill made was that, at the end of the day, they ended up completely misdiagnosing me. At the end of my stay, the Argent team informed me that I didn’t have OCD, but rather suffered with an “unspecified personality disorder with obsessive and avoidant traits”. After discharging with this diagnosis, I began attending a treatment center that Silver Hill recommended as a good fit. While there, I was assessed by a psychologist who specializes in OCD, and she definitively stated that I did not have a personality disorder, but instead had severe OCD. She mentioned that OCD that manifests with mental compulsions (instead of the more traditional physical compulsions) often gets overlooked or misdiagnosed, and that’s most likely the reason I received an incorrect diagnosis from Silver Hill.

-The final issue I’ve had with Silver Hill occurred after my discharge. Because the Argent Program was completely out of network with my insurance, I ended up paying up front for my stay and then submitting a claim to my insurance afterwards. While my insurance did end up approving a portion of the cost of the program, they mistakenly sent the reimbursement payment to Silver Hill rather than me. Instead of notifying me immediately that they incorrectly received payment, it took me reaching out to my insurance company to find out that Silver Hill had been sent the reimbursement money three weeks prior. When I tried to get in contact with Silver Hill’s billing department about this, it took weeks to receive any correspondence back at all. Emails and phone calls would go repeatedly unanswered, and it literally took my parents driving 2 hours to the campus to finally be able to speak with someone regarding this issue. At that point, Silver Hill said they needed to redirect the money back to my insurance, who would then route the funds to me. They told us that they initiated payment back to insurance in early February, but just recently they said that payment actually wasn’t sent back until late March. The lack of communication and transparency from Silver Hill in this matter has just raised additional concerns.

With all of that said, I would not recommend the Argent Program for those looking for diagnostic clarity with their mental health concerns.

if there were zero, stars, I would give it. I went to Silverhill in the hopes of getting off my prescription of benzodiazepines. I was told before going that this was something they do all the time and that I would go home feeling fine on comfort meds. Instead, I was taken off 1/2 of my prescription and When withdrawal symptoms hit the staff seemed to be annoyed at me for them. When I was first taken off, I was in a building called Main 2 which was homie and did not look like a hospital setting at all. When I went into withdrawal, they offered me nothing and kept getting on me about my withdrawal symptoms, as if they weren’t real. They then proceeded to strap me to a chair, screaming, and take me over to another building that was filthy and probably violated every code on the planet. It was like any other scary Psych hospital. The staff treat you like dirt and pay no attention to you. I was there for five days at which time they discharged me very ill. I am writing this as I lie in my apartment alone suffering from severe withdrawals, not knowing how I’m going to get help since they discharged me to the care of a so-called addiction specialist that I had seen a handful of times, and made it very clear that he was not a very good doctor and he would not be able to help me, and that I needed a different doctor an actual psychiatrist. Every referral they gave me was a bust. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t even know if I will survive this. I am all alone they ruined my life please please stay away and keep your loved ones away.

Silver Hill Hospital was nothing short of life changing for my daughter. After working with therapist, psychiatrists, group therapy, PHPs and IOPs, I was desperate for something that would help with her severe anxiety and depression. The entire team and staff at Silver Hill were so welcoming, supportive and amazing from intake, throughout her stay and as she transitioned out of their care. I cannot believe how much progress my daughter made in just two weeks. As a parent, I know how scary it can be to see your child suffer and then to have to make the decision to send your child away for psychiatric care, especially when reviews are few and far between. That said, our experience with Silver Hill has been incredible. I would highly recommend this facility to anyone, child or adult, struggling with their mental health. I am so thankful for how they cared for my daughter and brought her back to life in a way that no other treatment program we tried ever could.