Ellie Mental Health – Santa Fe

Borderline malpractice, if not outright client abandonment. Life-threatening incompetence from admin and therapist. Initially left a review immediately but it was too emotional, so I’m leaving this one. My therapist of… 4.5 years, Alex Spalding, was the best therapist I ever had. Four months ago, I started suspecting I have a dissociative disorder. Having never treated a dissociative disorder, this was naturally difficult for Alex (and me). I understand why he chose to cancel services due to not feeling qualified, or even no longer trusting me, but he did so dishonestly and manipulatively. In the weeks leading up to this, I suspected he might do so and expressed it. He lied to my face more than once to “reassure” me that wouldn’t happen. He ended our last session early while I was actively making suicidal threats. No one was called, no help was offered, and again he lied and said he’d see me at our next session. The next day, his boss called to cancel services on his behalf. She told me that I’m “not entitled to closure because it’s just a therapeutic relationship”. The law, ethics, and a functioning sense of compassion would disagree with that. I was offered ONE non-specialized referral to DBT, something not uniquely qualified to help with PTSD, Autism, or a suspected dissociative disorder. Just enough to try to cover EMH’s butt legally, without having to do any work towards actually helping me transition my care. I’ve still yet to receive any such referral, but it was worthless anyways. The possibility of losing services was not communicated to me prior, not even in our final session. I was never made aware that my therapist could be cancelling, nor why. I still don’t know for sure why I was treated this way. The worst part was having this stranger, my therapist’s boss, tell me that this was “for my benefit” in the most heartless, unbelievable tone, less than 24 hours after I made threats on my life to my therapist. They both knew I was actively suicidal while doing this. My problem was not the ending of services. I’m not owed anyone’s therapeutic care. But the WAY in which is was done was borderline illegal. And if not, it’s obviously unethical. Alex knows I’m a disabled single mom actively going through mental health crisis; I’m not energetically available to attempt a malpractice lawsuit. He and his boss KNOW THIS and took advantage of it. There was no ethical excuse for my therapist vanishing due to feeling endangered; we did virtual sessions only and I never threatened him even slightly. To do this while I threatened MYSELF? Now that’s just cruel. Dishonest, unprofessional, DANGEROUS handling of clients. Wish I had the energy to look into a lawsuit. If y’all 5150 me as retaliation for this review, I definitely will find the energy. It seems EMH has a serious, consistent problem with dishonesty towards clients. Perhaps they should leave Santa Fe. They don’t seem to be serving our community properly.

Ellie is a great place to get mental health help. The place is calm and nice to be in and they have snacks if needed. I definitely recommend trying it out for yourself.

There was a very rude lady named Patricia. Talk about no ability to understand mental health issues. I did not like their services and they lie about my copay. All I learned is they’ll let anyone get a license to help… people but care very little about people.

Bad experience with administrative side of things. This review is not about therapy services. Ellie mental health is a franchise and has terrible in-take process that was repetitive and took me 45 to 1 hr just to fill… out paperwork, signing my name and DOB well over a dozen times. They do not offer a sliding scale and they failed to tell me my insurance was out-of-network and instead tried to convince me that my co-pay doubling in price was to be expected. I work in health care, and I have to say trying to get services here was encountering a new low.