Meritus Behavioral Health Services – Hagerstown

Please do not waste your time using this practice. Look everywhere else and drive out of your way if you have to. My wife has experienced a terrible time getting care from this practice. She needed an updated letter for… her ESA and the office gave her such a hard time for a simple request. Dr. Akram was rude and condescending to her during appointments and at one point compared adhd and needing adderall to taking meth. Very unprofessional and inappropriate. Save yourself the time and look to another practice this practice clearly doesn’t care about its patients.

Absolutely horrific mental health care. They take nothing seriously. It’s a “treat ‘em and street ‘em” operation through and through. They will tell you that the barrier of entry for more intensive care is that the… patient needs to be harmful to themselves or others, but when they see the same patient three times for escalating issues that are both harmful to themselves and others they curb them within a few hours. Judge signs an order for evaluation? Not taken seriously. An ever growing list showcasing harm to others in the judiciary case search? Not taken seriously. Multiple declarations of wanting to commit suicide? Not taken seriously. Proven to be off of medication by both police body cam footage and CAD reports? Not taken seriously. They will flat out tell you that part of their evaluation process is to verify a medication regime with the issuing pharmacy by phone because there are no electronic means to do so, but when a patient is admitted on a Sunday morning they are let go by Sunday afternoon. I’d love to know how they verified this when 1) the issuing pharmacy isn’t even open and 2) by the staff’s own admission the psych doctors aren’t even onsite until Monday morning. If you ever want to see a full display of everything that is wrong with the state of mental healthcare in the United States, you can find it all under one roof at Meritus. Even the police agree.

Was referred here by my PCP and when I talked to the lady (who was very nice) they said that they only do medicine management

I went here the first week of December because I was having a major mental breakdown due to the loss of my fiance and a car accident and the fact that I've had depression for 13 years. I have never had substance abuse… issues in my life yet this seems to be the only thing they focus on. I was told I was being sent to a therapist but instead they sent me to a doctor that grilled me for an hour about the medicines I was on and DEA was mentioned several times. There was a discrepancy in my chart about a medicine that I was no longer on and I had a note from my doctor even confirming that yet I was still grilled about substance abuse and DEA issues etc. This place is strictly for substance abuse only no matter what they say if you're suffering from any mental issues do not go here they will only make it worse.

Lisa Groves is the rudest person I have ever encountered in medicine . I will not schedule an apt here after spending five minutes on the phone with this nurse. Do better

I was transferred to Lisa Grove's voice mail. When she returned my call I explained to her that MyChart wasn't allowing me to request a refill for one of my meds. She said I don't know how you got my number. She also… said I was welcome to find a new provider if I ( in other word s) wasn't happy. She is one of the rudest professionals I have ever talked to.