Top Mental Health Care for Children

by A.
(Long Island, New York)

Well this isn't exactly leisure but it's important and located on Long Island.

I'm sharing some information about what is, in my eyes, a top in-patient mental health care facility called Sagamore Children's Psychiatric Center.

It’s for children through 17 years of age. Admittance is voluntary or in some cases court ordered. Sagamore is a state facility and is run like a group home with strict discipline. The rules are infinite and the care is optimal. The children are always taken care of, every NEED is met.

The children live on units and attend school during the day. They shower twice a day and are fed well. The patients are offered off-unit activities in their free time, physical and creative. The kids go by a point system to learn discipline and focus on “target skills” such as following directions, accepting no, and expressing feelings.

The children see doctors and therapists who regulate medications and provide counseling. Privileges are earned as positive behavior improves. Some children make levels 2 or 3 which allows them to go on supervised trips off the facility's grounds, and to spend weekends at home. Regardless of level, children always have the option to visit with family on hospital grounds.

Sagamore is a long term facility where patients usually stay for a few months. The Sagamore staff is highly qualified and thoroughly screened. The staff is always willing to help a child who is willing to receive help.

There is hope for everyone and Sagamore is safe and can help. Private hospitals in my experience are not as effective for more seriously ill children, when discipline is needed Sagamore is best. It has to follow state regulations, it’s safer that way.

I know some Sagamore survivors (including myself) and they are doing great today! Any questions you can email me at:
mandee3200 (at) yahoo (dot) com

Sagamore Children's Psychiatric Center
197 Half Hollow Road
Dix Hills, NY 11746
(631) 370-1700

Comments for
Top Mental Health Care for Children

Average Rating starstar

Click here to add your own comments

Jan 20, 2012
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		seems like not much has changed in 20+ years
by: Jennifer

WOW, from what the comments are saying it sounds like Sagamore has not changed at all since the 80's. I was there in the late 1980's when I was 15 and I stayed there for 7 months. It was aweful. They put me on medication that gave me horrible sie effects. I ended up "cheeking" the meds the whole time I was there. Suposedly they kept me there so long because they were waiting for a bed in a residential school. But I had private insurence am I am sure they kept me there longer for that reason. All the reports on here about the abuse are true and were true so many years ago when I was there. Stay away from Sagamore Children's Center!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Feb 07, 2011
Rating
star 		Crimes Against Humanity
by: Anonymous

My friend was committed due to behavioral problems caused by severe abuse and PTSD, she self mutilated and was uncooperative but she never harmed anyone. I see people justifying the inhumane treatment of children in this place by blaming the children, saying they are or were bad kids who somehow deserved to be abused.

My friend was sexually assaulted, she was drugged and then punished for the side effects of the drugs, she was forced to take cold showers and fed unfit food. Mental illness is not a crime, but these children are treated like criminals. The Aids are often sadistic and abusive, most of them are apparently unintelligent. Dr Moise is a sadist who smirks as people plead and grovel, clearly reveling in the torment answering questions only with silence brings to his patients.

There is a great deal of obvious corruption in this facility, and there is a great deal of racism among the aids. My friend is not caucasian, but she was the palest girl in the E Unit (where the worst abuse happened) and she was singled out because of it. When she protested, she was told it was her turn, because she was white.
Jul 28, 2010
Rating
starstar 		Abuse
by: myob

saggamore is a place that is meant to help children with serious mentall issues. Although it seems that the staff there get there joly out of messing with kids that are helpless to speak up. I have witnessed it first hand and i'm not afraid to speak out. SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE ABOUT THAT PLACE!!! go to that press {something} anything! They are all working togther to make money and cover there asses to the best of their ability. They have no patients to work with the kids. There first resort is to inject pychrotropics into them. And laugh at the effects. Every so often cps does a round check, but they are well prepared to stop before they are seen. My opinion is they need to be shut down. or the staff have to be closely screened before given a job, and there has to be people willing to speak up. They purposley selcect who they are going to prey on depending on there ablity to say anything which goes by how they say it and there mentality. especailly as a child. PARENTS LET ME TELL U I'm the most honest person u can ever talk to. dont send ur kids there. and if u need to send ur kids to anyplace, ask ur son or daughter {how are u be trested?} and stay on top of the staff. And they especaially pick on the ones that the parents never come. half of the problem is the parents are sick themselves and dont care. or they dont belive them.
Jul 07, 2010
Rating
star 		My Experience
by: Jennifer

I come from an abusive home, my father is a drunk who did horrible things to me and my mother, and my mother used to take pills that made her numb to emotion. I was put in Sagamore because of behavioral problems in elementary school, the principle recommended it to my parents and after reading up on this institution I'm convinced he was being paid for it. I wasn't put through much there, but I saw people who were. I saw a little girl held down and injected in the back for coming out in the hall when all she needed was someone to talk to. Before they injected her she was fine, just missing her parents, after they injected her she was screaming banging against the wall. They didn't sedate her, they gave her a drug that made her crazy and caused her physical agony, I know because I got in contact with her after we got out. These people are sick, all they care about is money, human beings are nothing to them. It's not "Tough Love" they don't %^& care about you, don't defend these !@#$.
Jun 08, 2010
Rating
star 		The Truth
by: Anonymous

My friend was basically tortured on the E-Unit, and she didn't do any of the shit you did. They were outright sadistic and they enjoyed taunting her, not everyone in this Eugenics Facility are violent, but they love to provoke kids because the violent ones are worth the most money.

The psychotropic cocktails they give kids can make them act in ways they wouldn't otherwise act too, then they're all too eager to blame the victim and diagnose with some new condition to throw pills at. Don't defend these sadists, a lot of people clearly have had horrific experiences in this institution.


May 09, 2010
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		The Truth
by: Writer Of This Article

Hello I wrote this article because I spent 6 months in Sagamore and it changed my life. The 'abuse' I received is required to the abuse I gave the staff. I punched people in their faces, I broke a staff members thumb, I threated my roomates, tried to hurt myself, I stole the cleaning products to get high off of, I wiped my blood inside the padded room, I verbally abused staff on a daily basis and so much more disgusting behavior.
The staff members are people with feelings and natural reactions. When you push them too far they will do what they have to do to protect themselves and the other patients. Just because your a child doesn't mean you are innocent and people need to fluff your pillow at night. Its a hard core institution and if you couldn't handle it maybe your parents are the ones abusing you for keeping you in there. No one gets put in Sagamore for being a good kid, thats what private hospitals are for. I got three meals a day (bad tasting food but thats what your taxes can afford)Clean (yet smelly) sheets, an education, therapy, medications and a plan to get out of that place. I never said it was a vacation. It was a reality check. The only thing I can legitimatly complain about is the staff did not properly detox me off my previous meds from the other hospital. They just stopped giving me medications that I had already become dependent on. They would have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they had given me my klonopins! But anyway, Sagamore is the last stop before Pilgrim State and we all know that means when you go in, you don't come out. So sorry if you couldn't have your night light on and a teddy bear. Harden up.

yours truly,
Amanda Drago
Dec 20, 2009
Rating
star 		This place is bad.
by: Leon

So if you haven't hard already, they use electro shock here, they sit on kids backs and inject their spine with thorazine, they throw them in 'the hole' (isolation rooms), they give them unsafe combinations and concentrations of medications that often make the kids physically and mentally ill, they often taunt and goad kids to justify injecting, they feed children inadequate food and often expired drinks, and their idea of putting a child on a diet is starving them.

Most of the kids sent there are good kids with no more than a few behavioral problems, most of which are situational. Children who self harm when they are raped for years don't need to be drugged and put in a straight jacket, they need therapy.

A lot of children get diagnosed with disorders they don't have because of drug induced symptoms. There have been cases of ruptured internal organs and children have even died in their care. If you care anything about your child, keep them far away from this place.
Sep 16, 2009
Rating
star 		Abusive Monsters
by: Anonymous

They hurt kids badly there. Don't send your kids there.
Sep 03, 2009
Rating
star 		Keep your children out of this place.
by: Children's Voice

They do horrible things to the children in this place, especially on their "E-Unit". They have the perfect set up too, no one's ever going to believe the mental patient over the doctor, people naturally trust authority figures anyway so who's going to listen to some recovered lunatic who claims to have been tortured right?

They make the clinic look like a happy elementary school, on the first floor they have everything set up to look all innocent. Parents visiting can be forgiven for being mislead by the façade, especially when they herd all the children into the gym after a week of conditioning and set them loose. It looks like any normal school, the kids look like they're playing and having fun. They even have an old playground that no one ever gets to use in their pictures.

No one gets to see what goes on after the parents leave, or see the living conditions of these children in this place. Sometimes Child Protective Serves will investigate but they give warning ahead of time so everything's perfectly prepared. If you could see what these children are put though, see them injected and thrown in isolation rooms thrashing about from reactions to the drugs, see them scrubbing toilets with bleach (oh yes, they make them do that), see them begging for water because the medication makes them constantly thirsty, see the way the aids laugh at them and mock them and abuse them...

For the love of God if you love your children keep them out of this place. All that they show you is a facade, a disguise to hide the demon's heart within. The doctors there will lie to you and put on a right good show for you but if you could see what they keep from prying eyes you would see that this place is more akin to a dungeon than a hospital.
Sep 03, 2009
Rating
star 		They Experiment on Children
by: Sagamore Survivor

Sagamore has fronts that they put on and it has layers within it that most people don't see. What goes on in the E-Unit can be described as nothing short of torture. Racist aids single out caucasian patients in particular and they're always happy to give the kids an injection, no matter who the kid is. If you have a child keep them out of Sagamore, they lock kids in blue rooms after injecting them with psychotropics and laugh as these poor children clawing at the walls to escape drug induced hallucinations, full tactile hallucinations that can make any hell you imagine feel and smell and look and sound as real as the real thing. The nurses aids and the good doctor are monsters, what they do to children there can never be forgiven and should never be forgotten!
Jul 21, 2009
Rating
star 		Very concerned.
by: Anonymous

A close friend of mine had been admitted to Sagamore's in-patient program. Some of the experiences she described to me, mainly involving staff, were completely mind-blowing.

If your child has depression, anxiety...basically behavior that ISN'T necessariy disciplinary, but more emotional, DO NOT send him or her to Sagamore. The staff DOES NOT recognize a child's specific emotional needs. Kids who rob stores and start brawls are mixed in with children who are so stressed or anxious that they want to commit suicide. These two groups should be seperate, for the treatment they recieve should be different. It is not.

It's okay to be strict and disciplinary in some cases, but not ALL cases.

I'd like to share a story with you. To better show how some of these "nurses" work.

My friend was having trouble sleeping one night (which isn't surprising, as she described sleeping in her bed as, "like sleeping on a rock with a thin sheet for a blanket." A nurse comes in and tells her she has to go to sleep, and askes her if she'd like some help. By "help" she means a shot of Thorazine, a drug that changes the order of chemicals in your brain temporarily, normally administered to patients having extremely serious/violent outbursts (though it has been given to patients who were simply crying loudly in their room.) My friend knows what she means by "help", and understands what the drug will do to her (not to mention the pain she'd feel when they literally JAM the large needle into the back of her upper thigh.) She says "No thanks, I'll just go to sleep on my own." The nurse says "okay" and leaves. About 15 minutes go by. My friend is practically asleep. She hears the door open, and sees three different nurses, one holding a needle. One nurse says, "We were told you were having trouble sleeping." My friend responds, "I don't need it, I'm practically asleep" or something to that effect.
Now here's the disgusting part.
The nurse says, "Oh..well we already have the needle here. We don't want to waste it." They walk to her bed. She's now bawling, screaming that she'll go to sleep. They hold her down and forcefully stick the needle into her side.

My friend doesn't remember anything after that, but her roomate told her the next morning that she was "crawling around on the floor all night, acting like a lizard."

The therapy they talk about is simply doing activities (arts and crafts, sports, etc.) together. My friend saw her therapist ONCE a week if she was lucky, as everyone in her ward all went to him. And boy, I could tell you stories about that guy.

Please, choose a different hospital. Mather Hospital is a much, much better place to go. It's a private hospital, but they really do care about the kids there and treat them how they SHOULD be treated. Please parents, don't send your children to Sagamore unless they have some SERIOUS aggression and behavioral problems. And even then...try to find another alternative.
Feb 27, 2009
Rating
star 		Not good
by: Anonymous

they abuse the kids they suck i been there
Jun 01, 2008
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		Excellent Facility
by: Bill Drago

I know a young woman who spent a few months there. They did a great job with her and she came back a different person.

I would not hesitate to admit any of my children to Sagamore. It may seem horrifying, but they do a great job with the kids there. The hospital is well managed and the doctors are excellent.

Click here to add your own comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How?
Simply click here to return to Your Long Island Story