Anonymous’ Testimony – North Star Behavioral Health Hospital

I was sent to North Star in 2021 for feeling suicidal and depressed. I came into treatment asking for help, instead I received the opposite. Throughout my time there, I was in countless predicaments no child should have to witness, let alone go through themselves. Every patient was prescribed meds by their second day, regardless of their condition, if they’ve seen a doctor yet or not.

A vast majority of my peers were over medicated, 3/4 on meds they didn’t need. Others were put on insanely high doses of meds, to where you could barely tell they were humans. What we needed was love and open arms, not isolation, meds, and inhumane treatment. It took us 2 weeks of persuasion for the janitorial team to thoroughly clean our unit, wipe off the ketchup stain on our ceiling we had been complaining about for weeks on end. My peers and I wanted to take matters into our own hands, and took basic cleaning wipes and proceeded to clean the walls. We wiped off dried blood, dried toothpaste, mold, and old food within about 15 minutes. Managers threatened us, saying if we didn’t go to bed, our peers would be locked in another unit by themselves for the rest of their stay. ( we went to bed and they still got locked away) We were told if we were feeling suicidal to sleep in the dayroom.

On this particular night, several riots had broken out, my whole unit was triggered so we grabbed our beds and layed in the day room. We were talking for just a few minutes before we tried to get some rest. However we woke up to the sight of the whole nurses station filled with staff staring at us. The night manager told us we needed to get to bed or else he’d call the cops. One of my peers made the wrong decision by saying “if you don’t let us sleep out here we’re going to scream like a riot.” Within about 7 minutes, the de-escalation team stormed our unit, with rubber bullets, and SWAT gear. They grabbed our belongings and tossed them in our room.

One member from the de-escalation team sat outside each of our rooms. I was told that “if i left my bed i’d have a fun night with the cops” Patients being chemically sedated with ‘booty juice’ for very minor reasons One of my very close friends was stuck inside of a locker and couldn’t get out, staff thought she was messing around. So they forcefully pulled her out and sent her to the quiet room, where after about an hour she got booty juiced. Meanwhile, another patient was breaking phones, flipping tables and chairs, but was never reprimanded. Staff would give us pieces of styrofoam cups as a replacement for spoons When my close friend got booty juiced, she was a human vegetable. She couldn’t see, hear, talk, she couldn’t walk, or remember anything. She was just lying there, and moments prior she was screaming bloody murder. Those screams still haunt my dreams. My unit and I were all very visibly frightened so we asked to speak to an on-call therapist, the only one who was left was Jill. They called her in and we explained the situation to her. ( many of us were triggered as well which is another reason why we wanted to speak with her) However, she told us that she had to go home and rest her arm, because it was feeling sore from the covid shot. My phone privileges would get taken away when i would tell my mom what was happening, Suicidal girls were placed with the homicidal girl, Staff never did anything when the homicidal girl began posing serious threats Staff invading patients boundaries Patients being isolated longer then they should be There were countless more experiences that i had gone through however, i know this is fairly long as is. So i apologize