review of Sound Mental Health in Seattle

A stupid system produces stupid people.

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Seattle does have a burgeoning population of mentally ill and homeless people, but that does not excuse Sound Mental Health, which receives public money, for its egregiously poor management.

(1)  Despite the good intentions of its therapists, the administration, as one clinical psychologist on its staff confided in me, is bureaucratic, self-serving, and, in reality, much more interested in spreadsheets and high-level meetings than in the well-being of clients with whom, besides, they have no contact.  

I was virtually dropped as a client for twelve months, during which time Sound Mental Health was ostensibly looking for a replacement for a therapist about whose actual competence I was having serious doubts and who, obviously, enjoyed the favor of TB (top brass).

(2) The waiting room is like an insane asylum for the homeless, making Van Gogh's "Billiard Parlor at Night," by comparison, a vision of paradise.  The chairs are of the cheapest possible kind and the physical space is cramped.  I wasn't expecting the Pottery Barn, but the colors of the furnishings are garish and have the intended/unintended effect of
inducing nausea and a general malaise.

They might as well have asbestos in the walls, so toxic is the atmosphere to any sense of caring or well-being.  It won't be long, probably, before they have a bullet-proof window at Reception, although they do have a security guard (armed?) sitting behind the glass.

The receptionists seemed unconcerned about my discomfort in the waiting room.  They were not particularly busy.  They did not tell me that there was another place to wait (upstairs).  They did not try to contact my therapist to see if he was aware of my appointment.  Later the same therapist confessed that he was doing something else and had lost track of the time!

A little bit of imagination, real concern, and a real will to problem solve was evident in the conduct of the receptionists.  Being polite but "just doing their job"--and not being pro-active--was their response to my dilemma.

I take this is how they treat clients, in general.  With people like this you sense that they do not see their job as one of actually helping people.   They just do things perfunctorily.  "It's just a job" for them, right?  

If you arrive early and your therapist is late, as happened to me, you may have to spend what seems like an eternity in purgatory in the tiny waiting area.

One receptionist, a young Asian-American woman, suggested that I  step outside, where it was raining heavily and the wind was roaring at 40 mph, and wait there instead.  There had been a semi-psychotic individual or two standing on the steps half an hour earlier when I arrived at SMH.

If you don't like taking Metro buses (think Rapidride E to Aurora Village) because of the low-life behaviors and incivility, don't go to Sound Mental on Olive Way.  The annex on Broadway and Jefferson, for example, will jangle your nerves far less.

If you weren't a druggie, or either schizo or depressed, before going here, you will be after you go here...if you don't fall in those categories, you might very well be better off getting some decent self-help CD's, a good friend (not a Facebook or a Yelp "friend")--one who knows how to listen, the latter, albeit, a rare skill--, and doing yoga, or meditating.

Pet therapy, if not exactly an ideal replacement in and of itself, probably is more effective.

There are too many people in that situation now in Seattle for anyone, really, to be terribly concerned, most of all by the administration of Sound Mental Health, which must be aware of the mismanagement but choose to place its priorities elsewhere.

For this review I will undoubtedly never receive services again here despite denials to the contrary.

Their "Client Bill of Rights" framed like the Declaration of Independence and posted on the wall looks very nice.  But it's stuck there with a lot of red tape.

If SMH were honest, it would read as follows: "We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, gender...only between those who post reviews that excoriate the top brass and those who keep silent."

In the best of worlds, a philanthropist would establish a parallel SMH and siphon off the well-intentioned therapists, leaving the TB to stand in their own Seattle-sized puddle.

The top sets the example, and I am surprised, but on after-thought, not surprised that no one has blown the whistle on SMH.   No one dares.  No one knows.  No one cares (?).

The vast majority of therapists, called "clinicians" here, are in training and obviously want good recommendations once they move on.

Has anyone ever tried to interview the top brass to ask some hard questions of what goes on and who evaluates and how they do it?  How is client progress, or lack thereof, measured?

It is obvious they don't care whether the client stays or goes elsewhere:  it's all the same to them.

w