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Review content:
I have been advocating for a friend of mine who recently left Lakeside after a 2 1/2 year stint there and I can assure you that he couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. He claims the room there was just okay, the food was atrocious, the staff was only semi-helpful, and if he ever had anything to say that could be deemed ""angry"", he was threatened with hospitalization. \r
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Adult homes in general have a bad reputation, but I think something needs to be done to change this trend. Especially since the mental health community has never had the love or the respect it has needed. My friend had a case worker named Michelle (his social worker, I believe) who would not answer my questions when I got to the root of my friend's complaints and said she would not take my calls anymore and hung up on me. From what I hear, the owner, Avi, and his wife, run the place. Or is it Avi's mother? Apparently, Avi's mother, who owns the place, supposedly, drives a nice Mercedes Benz or a BMW and most of the residents are treated as animals, cattle, etc. And, yes, they are extremely over-medicated. But overmedicating is what American healthcare is good at, particularly in the mental health field, mainly and particularly because of the corruption and cronyism of the pharmaceutical industry and the insanity of things like the FDA, our idiot politicians, and so on. \r
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What I recommend people do is to contact their local politicians, the attorney general, and any inspector general they can of any and all agencies that can affect crappy, useless adult homes that are not really serving residents the way they could. Specifically, people here and anyone concerned should contact the Office of Mental Health - try to get through to Commissioner Michael Hogan's office, if possible. Let them know the situation at Lakeside and anywhere else. \r
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I, for one, like many others, am committed to there being a sea change in the way people recovering from mental illness have resources that don't work - and haven't had what they needed in pretty much all of recorded history. Lakeside deserves to be audited and closely examined. Small claims is next for my friend - time to sue to get some money back that Lakeside is illegally holding onto (they forced him to sign away a whole month of Social Security when he didn't even have money to eat). \r
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Yes, it's that bad at Lakeside Manor.
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