JFriedlander at Island View

Interesting that I found this site. Anyways, I was at Island View for 13 months from Aug 99- Sep 00. Though I hated my stay there it did do some good for me, Iâ??m graduating from college this year and attending a graduate program in Psych oddly enough. Despite the positives I received from this program I still have nightmares almost every night where I wake up in that fucking building. For spring break in 2004 I drove from Colorado to southern California and decided to make a quick pit stop in good ole Syracuse UT. Upon arriving in the parking lot I had to get out and puke. Fuck that place, I never wish anyone to have the experiences that I had in attendance. If any of yall remember Tony I am still in contact with him, he abandoned IV soon after I left the program to start up his own.

Speaking of which... I managed to get in contact with a few of the people Lets see....

• Blake: killed him self 6 months after graduation
• Sean: Jail
• Mike: Jail
• Greg: Jail
• Porter: went home for a visit on halloween of 99, did an Extacy binge at a halloween rave.

(all of the above were considered model residents) Great Program guys, real high success rate.

I also remember that they had me on so many psychotropic that I couldnâ??t think half of the time. It was like I was stuck in a shell of a body and was unable to feel anything. Upon graduation I got off of those drugs ASAP and have been doing fine ever since.

Out of all of the people in the program I would have to say fuck the staff the most, Fuck Kendall, fuck Sherry. I remember once Kenall threw me in that room because we were on 'unit arrest' or what ever it was called because I thanked him for the food he brought me. His justification was that I spoke when we were told to not speak. I got pretty angry about that and asked him "Why are you being so fucking rude?" he picked me up and threw me into wall and told the staff the reason why my head was bleeding was because I did it to myself. ( I was admitted for drugs mostly, but no self mutalation) As a result of this more staff was called in. They held me down and gave me a injection of thorezine and I woke up the next day with bruises on my head. I told my therapist at the time, but he didnt belive me.

Despite the EXTREME negative experiance I had in Utah, I will admitt that there was some good to it. My grades did improve, I got into a good undergrad program and a good grad program, and for the most part I cut down on drugs (I only drink now but Im 22 and that aint illegal). The folks in charge of the IV program seriously because it does have some great potential.

PS
another thing that pissed me off is when my parents tried to convince me that what they did was harder on them that it was on me, that is bull shit. To any parent reading this thread: I understand it is difficult to send your child away, belive me I do (I currently work for a non-prof at risk adolecent program, and I see parents send thier children away quite frequently). You cannot possibly imagine what your child goes through in these programs. For the most part I think everyone whom has attened one of these programs will tell you that it did in fact scar them in some way for the rest of their life. for me, it is the nightmares, I can deal with that. Some people however cannot, my friend Blake for example, have you ever been to a funeral for a 17 year old kid who committed suicide by eating a bottle of the very drug that was prescribed to him by IV? Im willing to bet not. Also to any kid that just got out of that program and is spouting out the usuall RTC high that people tend to get post graduation, wait a year when the nightmares of returning dont go away and then tell me that IV had no adverse side effects.

Sources:

• Datasheet about the facility on Fornits Wiki
• Thread on message containing the original testimony