Our experience at Autumn Hills Behavioral Health (Victory Bay Residential)

Posted on 2026-04-15 by [lily]

tldr

Autumn Hills (abbreviated as AH from now on) is a very good program and one that I would recommend to anyone needing a residential program

Pros

Cons

Bottom line

AH provides a space where you can heal. The cons are obvious but can be worked around. The pros are something you can't know until you get here and spend 30 days here, so I'd like to affirm that AH will most likely be a good fit.

Obviously I've only been to AH and not any other residential programs but I believe that this is one of the better ones, mostly because I can't see many points that they can improve on

The therapy

The two therapists I worked with were both associates (as are most therapists at AH). This means that they aren't fully qualified yet and are working under a supervisor.

This did not affect the quality of therapy I received here though, both therapists were excellent and led excellent groups.

My individual therapist was excellent and pushed me in ways that I needed and led me to discover things about myself that I only had a vague idea of in the years prior.

Groups typically were 1.5hr sessions with the therapist discussing a topic, idea, activity, or skill. Each therapist brought their own set of skills and methods to groups. One therapist brought unstructured processing style groups, another brought semi structured open flowing groups, and another brought highly structured groups with speaking notes.

All three were effective in helping us process and heal.

The only thing is that their schedules seem to be out of their control, leading them to grab us for individual therapy at awkward times.

Bottom line

Therapy was good, great even. Groups were typically effective and I can't understate how useful it is to be in a place where all you're doing is either low-key therapy (reflecting, journalling, writing, talking with peers) or high-key therapy (individual and group therapy).

When it's all you're doing, your brain is forced to be locked in that "therapy" mode, and you make exponentially more progress than you would in typical weekly sessions.

The other activities

Yoga

Fitness

Sound bath

Nutrition

Bottom line

Good!

The BHTs

As I said, the quality of BHT varied wildly from one to another, and this opinion was shared amongst the whole cohort I was with.

Some BHTs were extremely kind, helpful, understanding, and professional.

Some BHTs were 20 somethings who seemed to be spending more time slacking off than working in any way.

Some actively made our healing harder, though not to any significant amount, just I can name a few instances of BHTs actively interrupting groups, not being helpful, putting us in weird positions, or just making our lives harder.

Some activities were run by BHTs, and those were almost universally not useful wastes of time. They were almost always unprepared, unprofessional, and unhelpful in processing. They would make us fill out worksheets, do the same gratitude exercises, or more often than not, do nothing at all.

Most of the time the BHTs would "supervise" groups by simply sitting there and staring at their phones doing nothing. This must be the easiest job in the world...

There were some night staff who consistently would wake up the other clients (I'm a very heavy sleeper) by not following some basic common sense (don't bang on the doors at 3am...). Basic instructions like "turn the lights off in the hallways" and "don't stomp around or bang on our doors while we're trying to get our rest" took multiple days to get through.

This was, frankly, not acceptable.

Time spent sitting with my peers chatting about our experiences was much more useful than these BHT run "groups"

A full review of each BHT that I interacted with can be found here

Note: None of the BHTs were able to consistently use the correct pronouns for the client who used neopronouns. Ze was constantly misgendered and it pissed us the hell off. None were explicitly transphobic but none were able to put in the basic effort of using the right goddamn pronouns.

Bottom line

Could certainly be improved with more training, more experienced staff, and stricter hiring.

BHT groups were almost universally wastes of time.

Overall, barely a passing grade.

The case management

Case management is a definitive weak point of AH. For a long time there was a single case manager, and they hired a second one around the time that I started.

The case managers were overworked, stretched between three houses, and busy managing everyones cases. Case managers are also responsible for running groups for some reason????

The discharge organizer was even more overworked, leading to everyone not knowing where they were going after discharge until unreasonably late. For a friend during my time here, he didn't know until THE DAY BEFORE HE LEFT. Granted this was also due to insurance being cruel and evil, but still that late of a turnaround was unacceptable.

Information distribution by the case managers to the rest of the treatment team was consistently inaccurate or absent. I didn't know my exact discharge date and was told different things over and over by different people (thursday or friday? who knows). My friend didn't know his discharge time until the moment they called him out to head out because someone was here to pick him up.

Bottom line

Case management can and should be better.

The scheduling

Autumn Hills schedule

The above schedule is mostly accurate, and gives you a general idea of what goes on during a week at AH.

The food

Excellent. No notes. Healthy, tasty, varied, and always on time.

Other perspectives

Other perspectives by my peers during my 30 day stay at AH.

to-be-added



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