Brunswick Hospital Center Foundation

Recently completed a 10-day stay at Brunswick. If I could give less than 1 star I would. Stick to South Oaks.

For starters, my doctor (Veronica) was awful. I saw her for about a total of 15 minutes over my 10 days there. Veronica's patient care philosophy is one-size-fits-all: Put patient on Abilify and wait a week, no matter what that patient's needs actually are. She is also extremely uncommunicative, and prescribed me the meds without telling me A) that she was prescribing them, or B) Any information about the meds. She did this to another patient too, so this is definitely a habit of hers. I have never had a more horrible doctor or mental health practitioner in my life.

An important thing to know about Brunswick is that it is NOT a treatment facility. In their own words, Brunswick's specialty is "containment and stabilization", which means you sit around doing absolutely nothing all day while they collect your insurance money. There are usually a few "groups" each day (ranging from zero to two each day lasting 40 minutes each), put on by art therapists. These groups most commonly consist of coloring pages. Very rarely did they consist of anything resembling actual therapy. The art therapists are very kind people, but what they do is not treatment. There was reportedly an option to sign up for one to one therapy, which I attempted to do persistently and got exactly one session over my 10 days. Because there is nothing to do and no treatment being offered, Brunswick is an incredibly stressful environment. I ended up spending most of my time pacing the hallway until my blisters had blisters.

If you are transgender, AVOID BRUNSWICK LIKE THE PLAGUE. Several staff members are actively bigoted against transgender patients. I saw transgender patients being misgendered on purpose regularly by one staff member (Rochelle). I saw a different staff member (Shaquira) reveal a transgender patient's personal information (birth name and transgender status) to other patients unprompted like it was juicy gossip.

I admitted myself voluntarily, hoping for help with my suicidal ideation. I left Brunswick even more suicidal than I went in. I have never had such a stressful experience in my life. They actively made me worse. DO not go here, do not send your loved ones here.

Some positive notes: I have heard from every patient who has him that Dr. Khan is the best doctor and that he genuinely cares about his patients. If you are randomly assigned him as your doctor, your experience may be more positive. Staff members Lorraine and Diego are awesome, they're the best and deserve a shoutout!

If anyone from Brunswick is reading this, here are my suggestions to improve Brunswick:
- Fire Dr. Veronica
- Increase the amount of groups / hire more therapists and make them consist of actual therapy instead of coloring and bingo
- Give your staff a sensitivity workshop on working with transgender patients in a respectful manner