Hospital shutters inpatient facility for LGBT addiction, mental health
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| Randy Martin |
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| Franky Smith |
ARLINGTON —The Pride Institute, an inpatient treatment program for LGBT people with chemical dependency and mental health issues, quietly closed its doors last month after 11 years.
Wayne Hallford, CEO of Millwood Hospital in Arlington, where the Pride Institute has been housed since 1998, said the unit was closed because there weren’t enough patients to justify keeping it open.
The Pride Institute occupied approximately 10 beds and its own wing at the 120-bed Millwood Hospital.
But Hallford said the unit housed an average of only two to three patients at a time during the last year.
"We’re still set up to treat the gay and lesbian and community when they come into the hospital," Hallford said.
"It will simply be a treatment track within our general population. We still have some staff with experience in working with that community, and they will still be involved when someone comes in."
Franky Smith, the counselor who’d served as director of the Pride Institute since October 2007, said he was abruptly laid off on March 31 and given a severance package by the hospital.
Smith said he was surprised by the decision because a few months before, Hallford had pledged his support for the program during a meeting between the two.
"There was no warning," Smith said. "This caught me completely off guard."
While the patient count in the Pride Institute had reached zero on a few occasions, it also sometimes rose as high as 12, Smith said. He blamed the hospital for eliminating a marketing position for the unit last year.
"I don’t know how it’s supposed to grow without a marketer," Smith said. "I was only one person. I couldn’t do the marketing and the therapy."
Smith, a transgender man, also questioned whether other counselors at Millwood Hospital are qualified to deal with LGBT patients.
"I don’t know that a straight therapist could understand what it’s like being an LGBT person and what kind of issues we have to go through, any more than a white person could understand what’s it’s like to be black," Smith said.
Randy Martin, who served as director of the Pride Institute from 2003 until 2007 and now has a private counseling practice in Dallas, said the unit’s closure represents a significant loss for the LGBT community. The Pride Institute at Millwood Hospital was the only facility of its kind in the region and one of few nationwide.
"That doesn’t mean that other programs aren’t helpful and significantly helpful, but for many patients who come from different kinds of backgrounds, being in that gay-friendly, gay-affirming environment with staff who specialize in the treatment of that community made that program sought out by patients as well as clinicians who needed to refer," Martin said, adding that the Pride Institute also provided a supportive environment for people with HIV/AIDS.
"A gay-affirming environment is always helpful, but particularly when you’re severely depressed and suicidal, when you’re beginning to address substance abuse issues, when you’re at your most vulnerable, that’s not a time when you need to worry about being judged, being shamed by staff and other patients," Martin said.
Martin said there once were about a half-dozen facilities across the country affiliated with the Minnesota-based Pride Institute, founded in 1986. But Martin said many of the facilities have closed for the same reason as the Arlington unit.
According to the Web site of the Pride Institute in Eden Prairie, Minn., the only remaining affiliates were in Arlington and Fort Lauderdale. A spokeswoman at the Pride Institute in Minnesota said this week she wasn’t aware that the Arlington facility had closed. The spokeswoman didn’t respond to requests for additional information.
Liz Taylor, an Arlington resident who’s twice been a patient at the Pride Institute at Millwood Hospital, said she’s now going school to become a counselor and had dreamed of someday working at the facility.
Taylor, who was treated at the Pride Institute for depression in 2005 and participated in a clinical drug trial in 2007, said she was sad to learn that the unit had closed and still hopes it will eventually reopen.
"I think it provided such a great service for the gay and lesbian community," said Taylor, 53, also a recovering addict who’s been sober for almost 22 years. "It gave us a safe place to talk about the issues that made us depressed and made us want to drink. I’ve been in treatment centers that weren’t geared toward the gay and lesbian community, and it’s not a safe place to talk about our issues."
E-mail wright@dallasvoice.com
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition April 17, 2009.
I work at Millwood Hospital, and have for many years. I can assure everyone that our facility is, and remains, gay-friendly. We are here to serve the community as whole, all people from all walks of life.
I often read the Voice and I am somewhat disturbed by the lack of facts in this article. One specific fact that has been sorely misrepresented relates to there being no marketer available for the Pride program since last year. That is just out and out wrong. That program was marketed, marketed, marketed and marketed and the decision to stop marketing the program due to a void rate of return did not happen until this year 2009.
There are other comments in the article that are not true as well, but I am not at liberty to address them in this format.
I have been dealing with the Voice for many years, since way back when Robert Moore was selling advertising and have always believed that I could depend on the accuracy, veracity and dignity of all printed in the publication until now.
Mr. Cohen:
The statements about marketing were made by Franky Smith, not by Dallas Voice.
John Wright
Pride is a failed business, not the end of hope for LGBT people suffering from substance abuse. Just about every substance abuse hospital that I’ve ever heard of uses a 12-step program as a road to recovery for its patients. That route can be traveled through Alcoholics Anonymous. There is a well-established LGBT group in Dallas called Lambda. It can be found in the organization listings of the Dallas Voice. You don’t even have to pay to go there if you don’t have any money (or insurance). If you do have a little money, they pass a basket asking for a dollar or two. What’s more, all AA groups have been way ahead of their times as regards nondiscrimination policies. With the current economic client I imagine that more and more people are going to need to be taking advantage of non-profit services such as this. The cost of being in the hospital for any reason is astronomical now. Maybe there should be a tax on businesses that make so much money from advertising and selling alcoholic beverages to help pay for all the problems it causes in some people’s lives. One of the things I’ve noticed in my more than 45 years on the party circuit is that the owners of successful nightclubs usually don’t drink the way their customers do. I’ve noticed the opposite of nightclub owners who fail. And in case you are wondering, I drink as much as I want. But I wouldn’t hesitate a second to go to AA if I wanted to stop.
Thank you for allowing me to speak here. I speak only for myself…
I worked at Millwood Hospital at the PRIDE Unit from ’03 to ’08. I hesitate to write this, because my heart and my mind are in conflict about what has happened to PRIDE over the past few years, ending with its closing for good.
My heart felt betrayed for a long time but, I stayed as long as I could. I dearly love our former patients and our former staff and I always will. PRIDE had a good run for a good while.
One truth is, that it seemed to begin to be neglected a long time ago. Not by staff but by those who insist on ever larger profit margins. It began to seem as though we weren’t worth the investment anymore.
My hope is that somewhere, somehow, soon another program will arise to serve the LGBT community, better even than we did. Specialized treatment works, research shows that.
There are wonderful, beautiful, caring people working at Millwood. I think the hospital could benefit from treating them a lot better.
I will cherish the time I had with PRIDE and the friends I made who worked or still work at Millwood. It’s time though…it’s time to move on. The relationship between the program and the hospital simply ran its course.
Bless us, (our community) all.
Namaste’
The PRIDE INSTITUTE at Millwood Hospital has SAVED MY LIFE twice, and once again as a normal citizen with an illness, the faculty who had no experience in dealing with the GLBT Community from the get-go, should have been dismissed a long time ago, once again, as I said, as a citizen dealing with very personal issues, at a place, where at at times I felt safe by my peers and those who took the time to show some compassion to those of us who once again felt like there was no compassion for the patients. It boils down to GREED and once again being pushed and shut out of treatment that since the doors were opened have saved countless HUMAN BEINGS..but not enough to matter, once again, I shed a tear for my brothers ans sisters who increasing ling will have nowhere to go but back into what drew them there to begin with. THANK you for PRIDE and their dedication to us who DO Buy what they taught us,which is..GOD does not make junk, and YOU ARE WORTH IT1! To the friends I knew and had met once I GOT there, I hope you all are well and still clean and sober. Another lesson I Learned at PRIDE WAS That is to not to look at this sad situation as another defeat from those who don’t, won’t and can’t understand what it is like for the youth in our community to rally together, we can do it, done it before, we’ll do it again. If nothing else we are a tenacious group. After reading this article it was definitely a sad day in the Watson household. STAY Strong & HERE is a big “HUG” To all of the past and last graduates of the PRIDE INSTITUTE! KEEP IT UP! Somehow I FEEL we will take care of each other and jump this hurdle as we always have! Peace & Namaste’
I just realized that I made a mistake. I’ve only been on the party scene since 1969, which would be 40 years instead of 45. Vanity compels me to correct that misinformation as relates to my age. I’m 59 and lucky to be here, considering all of the things that have happened to all of the dear friends I’ve lost over the years to a variety of maladies. I just heard this week about a very close straight female friend who died at the age of 63 as a result of complications from alcohol and drug addiction. She was the prettiest, smartest, most compassionate woman I have ever known, but addiction destroyed her. Even her trust fund that paid for countless hospitilizations and the love of her family and friends couldn’t save her from her fate. When she died, she looked more like 83 than 63 and she had the mind of a child. However, I still think there is way for anyone with these problems to find a solution if they search long and hard enough.
I just now ran across this Article, and I am devastated to find this out. If it was not for Randy Martin, Dr. Brownlee, Kelly Burdick and the wonderful staff of the PRIDE UNIT, I would be dead today. They saved my life in an atmosphere that was so incredibly comforting and therapeutic! I love you all that took the BEST CARE POSSIBLE for me! I am proud to say I am still clean and sober thanks to the tools,love,care, and honesty the best therapy I could have ever received anywhere in the world! I have been clean and sober now for 6 years and counting. I have boasted about the Pride Unit to ever addict I have come in contact with since. I have a dear friend now who is in need of Rehab, because he is addicted to Meth(which is what I was addicted to!) and he is on the needle and I am in fear for his life!I want him to be able to get the care and treatment that I had, but now that the Pride Unit is closed…where can he go to be in the same Pride-type treatment facility that caters to LGBT????? I am so saddened by this news. I think about the nurses,Dr. Brownlee, Kelly Burdick, Randy Martin,and the many staff members that I became so close to often! AGAIN THANK YOU PRIDE INSTITUTE FOR MY LIFE! It took 3 stays, but the third time was my Charm!