Rhylee Senescall
Dickinson, ND
My therapist helped me so much with anxiety, but was completely unsure what to do with trauma and changed the subject every time I brought it up. Not okay at all. She was the first person I told about my trauma and her ignoring it all together made me feel very invalidated and that my experiences were unimportant or less than.
I love Dr. Free and respect her for some of the things she helped me with early on, but medication management was severely lacking. I was overmedicated and not monitored at all in regards to side effects and blood testing that was supposed to be done. I was put on 2 high dose SSRIs, which countless doctors since have said that should never have happened and that I was most likely having some serotonin syndrome symptoms. At the time I thought it was just unrelated health issues, but the symptoms went away after getting off one of the meds.
I was put on 2 other meds for PTSD, which again were not managed well so I was pretty much a zombie. When I called multiple times to ask about getting off the 2 meds, I never heard back after countless messages and being told by the nurse that she would talk with Dr. Free and call me back. I ended up very slowly weaning myself off each of the meds. I was young and naive at the time, so I put up with all of this and assumed I was just going to have to do it myself.
For the past 3 years, I have been getting the same bill for an appointment that I never had. I cancelled it and didn't even live in town anymore at that point. The bill is a full appointment bill, not a last minute cancel fee or anything like that. It was the full amount with no insurance and no sliding scale applied. I had both at the time and my previous bills were very small or nothing at all. That in itself was a red flag.
I have made so many calls to not only the Dickinson office, but the financial office in Bismarck too. Everytime I call, I get bounced around to different people who have no clue why I'm getting billed. I've been told everytime that there is a bill on my account for the date, but there are absolutely no appointment notes from that date. This makes me suspect someone was skimming money somehow. I've been told it will be taken off my account, that it is on their old system and only one person has access to it, or that they are unsure of what I'm referring to and give me different numbers to call that have the same outcome. Every call ends with a voicemail or being told I will hear from the said woman that has access to the old system, but over the past 3 years I have not gotten a single call back.
I am so frustrated at this point with it. I hate the idea of a bill that I am not responsible for going to collections, but I am not about to pay for a $300+ service I never received knowing that this is not the first time it has happened.
I have heard from multiple other people that this billing issue happened to them in that same time period. It's very suspicious and honestly heartbreaking that someone would potentially skim money from someone who is just in need of mental health care.
Very disappointed in Badlands. If you have ANY other choice of care, do NOT go here. There are plenty of other places in town and in Bismarck/Mandan, if you're willing to travel, that will treat you so much better.
Good luck and God bless you on your journey to getting well.