Johnson Ave @ St Bernards Behavioral Health

St Bernard’s Behavioral Health has a long way to go to compare to other similar institutions. I am comparing them to The Landing at Lakeside Behavioral Health in Memphis. Although their staff, including my psychiatrist, was excellent, and they had a nice activity area that you can go to a couple times a day as well as pretty good food, the facility itself, the accommodations, as well as some of the policies, were really bad. I will give you an idea of what it was like. The bed or mat had this roll-up type sleeping bag on it to sleep on with a built-in pillow. “Pillow” in quotes. The middle of it is flat as a pancake from overuse so it is really no pillow at all. The shower “set up” was awful. There was no curtain to hold the water in, but this magnetic, stick-on padded thing that didn’t really hold the water in much at all. So much so that when you were done with your shower you had a gigantic puddle of water mess to mop up, ringing your towel out over and over with the water in the tub. When I got cold and asked for an extra blanket at night, they refused to give me one and I had to lay there cold. They also have a no visitors allowed policy. No one - ever. You never ever get a single visitor in this bleak place. And there is only a single phone for all the females (and a single phone for all the males) to share over the course of two hours each day. Why do I say it is bleak? All there is to do in the day room is color or watch TV and there are no pictures on the walls, no mirrors, and the window blinds are permanently shut. You can’t even cut your fingernails if you need to, they won’t let you use fingernail clippers. I had an ingrown toenail and had to deal with the pain of it my entire stay. All this and they only charge a little over $2000 a day!