Harmony Place Montetey is an eating disorder, mental health, trauma, and addiction treatment center located in Monterey, California. They offer eating disorder PHP, IOP, and transitional living.
Harmony Place Monterey specializes in treating people with trauma disorders, and they use multiple types of therapies including DBT, EMDR, IFS, Somatic Processing, Expressive Psychotherapies such as Psychodrama & Gestalt, Relapse Prevention and Cognitive Therapies.
Any reviews? Please post in comments below. You can check out the FAQ and Guidelines for suggested questions. Thank you!
Do they take out of state Medicare?
no, unfortunatley. Pretty much all PHP programs that take Medicare are affiliated with a medical hospital.
There is some flexibility with Medicare IF the ‘non-particpating’ aka out-of-network facility agrees to the Medicare rate (they can charge an additional 15%) That way the facility can still get paid by Medicare, but not have to enroll with them. Many facilities won’t bother, but it cant hurt to try…
https://www.medicareinteractive.org/get-answers/medicare-covered-services/outpatient-provider-services/participating-non-participating-and-opt-out-providers
Has anyone been to Harmony Place that could write a review or post a little bit about their experience? Some ideas for questions to answer are here at this link. Any information about their trauma treatment program would also be super helpful to a lot of people in this community, especially with UnitedHealth Group and Optum Health closing the eating disorder & trauma residential treatment programs they own in March (Fairhaven, Cielo House, and Turning Tides).
Any recent reviews with all the basic questions answered?
Does Harmony Place offer virtual treatment or outpatient virtual treatment? Accept Medicare?
Pretty sure it’s no to virtual.
And they didn’t used to take Medicare but I would check with them to confirm.
Kinda hoped virtual IOP would be a choice. I guess Medicare won’t cover virtual treatment anyway. I’m not a candidate for in person treatment when nowhere accommodates reduced sugar to control bacterial infections in small intestine and mouth, which is medically necessary to avoid recurring infections that make eating impossible. Having medical issues caused by AN that ED programs refuse to deal with is beyond frustrating and leaves me with urgent care or an ER that might throw me in med surg for stabilization.
*TW* Sometimes I feel so hopeless about recovery…why have I spent the past 3 years working on this without any psychological support, physical issues have not reversed, and it makes it feel like a waste that I’m mentally worse off, all alone, did this for other people, it hasn’t made any positive difference in my life, and I still have no one in my life, no job, and the only difference is that I dislike myself even more and don’t want anyone to see me, which is why I don’t meet anyone, etc because I’m so ashamed of my appearance and absolutely mortified by it from sun up until I’m asleep that I wonder if I’ll ever get over it. I’m closer to my trauma and live with that everyday now just like before AN come along. It feels more painful than active AN. Right now, I’m unable to find any pride in all the effort I’ve put in and don’t see the physical change as progress. It has me questioning if I was right the whole time that I was fine and everyone else was lying to me. The specific thought I wonder if other people have had, but it could be very triggering, so it doesn’t belong here. It’s too bad it’s 9-12 months wait for a therapist here. I can’t imagine living this way for that long. AN tells me it can make it better and I tell it what consequences could happen. It keeps telling me it’s better than this. AN claims I would not be lonely if I engaged a bit. But I was lonely then, too. AN claims I wouldn’t hurt anymore. That’s not true. Maybe I wouldn’t hurt emotionally from trauma, but there isn’t “engaging a little bit” and keeping it that way. It physically hurts. It might cause more damage than before. I will lose control. Don’t engage for one more day. I don’t want to have to start all over. I don’t think I could *end TW*
I had groups with the staff at Harmony Place at the original program they ran. That was the only place I’ve been that acknowledges trauma causing ED. When I was there I didn’t have memories or ability to verbalize what happened to me that caused me to feel dirty and use ED and SH behavior.
K ,
Recovery from ED and trauma with complicated medical issues is hard and frustrating. There were many times I wanted to give up. But like you write, if you give it n to AN or SH all it does is make everything worse.
I see how hard you are fighting K,
You have so much insight, and you always have a supportive word for others on here.
Trauma sucks so much. You live through it and then your mind gets stuck on replay…..
The original Harmony place program, was very good at helping people with ED and trauma and I wish there were more programs like it.
River Oaks does pretty well with treating trauma and EDs, because it was designed by the directors of Harmony Place, but it is the only program I’m aware of that does especially for people with Medicare.
AN is a liar. AN is a cruel dictator.AN wants to keep you all to itself until it’s literally sucked the life out of you.
Don’t let it, keep fighting 1 day,1 hour, 1 second at a time.
K I believe in you – in your ability to recover and heal.
If you ever want to reach out, my email is typhoid_lily@yahoo.com.
L,
I appreciate your encouragement, kind words, and support sooo much! This community is all I have right now. I just moved and outpatient wait times are so long. I’m super lucky my parent is tearing through therapist listings for the next 2 weeks for me, so I don’t have to face the endless rejection to find the person who can help. That was so hard last time facing almost 100 no’s to get a yes and then still getting thrown out of therapy in less than a year. I’m hopeful I will find someone willing to take me where I am with (if I can speak positively of myself) success with harm reduction over 3 years that helps me stay more stable/prevent bad relapses. I’m not disguising it as full recovery, just tired of the full physical recovery followed by full relapse every single time and the fear as the relapses get worse.
AN did take everything from me. All of my friends, ability to work and study, damaged my relationship with my then boyfriend, had me stay with him when he enabled my illness and was fine with my extreme dependency to be cared for, though *TW* it led him to guilt me and he became mildy abusive. AN told me I couldn’t live without him and that I deserved to be treated that way *end TW* Without my stronger self, I put up with that for much longer than I would have if I hadn’t been ill.
I thought I’d die that way eventually. Getting back to the point I am didn’t seem possible. It is AN voice that tells me it isn’t worth it because I’m still lonely, self-conscious, and not working. I do have to remind myself everyday that any lapse will jeopardize my stability, so that my goals to work, and be around people in my community remain be possible again.
Maybe I should be looking to the past and how life with active AN was instead of believing what AN says now. If I know what happened, why is it hard not to believe the AN voice now? Do other people struggle with this, too?
Yes, even almost 10 years in recovery sometimes AN whispers that it could make my life easier.
It’s a lie.
What does make life easier is eating what you want when you’re hungry and not worrying about calories and trusting your body.
It takes time and effort. For me the first couple of years in recovery, I despised my body.
But I tried to focus on the fact that I had more energy, and I could think, and my moods were more stable. I still don’t love my body, but I hated it when I was at my sickest too. At least now I have more of a life, so my body and appearance matter a lot less.
I’d like to continue this conversation K, would you feel ok emailing me?
email sent.
Do you remember the ‘worst day of your ED’ agenda?
Maybe writing that out would be helpful…
Oh yeah! That’s a really good idea. I lost the list of assignments : (
Any reviews for the eating disorder program?
I’m interested as well…