What Happened at The Guidance Center, Flagstaff, AZ — An Overview

Between 2024 and 2025 I experienced serious harm at The Guidance Center in Flagstaff, AZ. In my view, what happened was not a series of mistakes — it was a pattern of ethical failures and legal violations that nearly cost me my life. The harm included:

• Violation of my rights as a service dog handler under ADA law
• Two psychiatric holds issued without proper risk assessment — ideation alone is not sufficient legal or ethical grounds
• Physical restraint without justification
• Denial of medical care when I reported chest pain with dangerously high vitals
• HIPAA violations
• A diagnosis entered into my records that was never disclosed to me
• Retaliatory termination of care after I filed complaints
• Clinical documentation that was dehumanizing and dishonest

What follows is my account of what happened.

It is worth noting that from 2012-2024 I had zero hospitalizations for mental health issues, and while I had signs of PTSD and panic attacks I usually recovered quickly and mostly functioned ok during this period; except for work, I frequently struggled maintaining work. I also did NOT take any psychiatric medications during this period, except for sleep aids.

Late summer of 2023 I was evaluated and subsequently declared SMI / Seriously Mentally Ill according to AZ rules. SMI is an AZ designation, in practice it is supposed to give access to further mental health services – I say “in practice”, because I have not seen any signs of that.

In Fall of 2023 I applied for disability and stopped working entirely; this was done with a high degree of encouragement from Candace. In the first couple of months of 2024, I asked to be evaluated for ADHD, and The Guidance Center did the testing. At the end I was told that I was in the top 10% of people with inattentive ADHD; just to have several providers turn around and claim that “it really wasn’t ADHD, but rather PTSD”; despite my continued assertion that the ADHD symptoms were present before PTSD made itself known.

Throughout early 2024 multiple medications were attempted to help me specifically with my symptoms related to ADHD; and not surprisingly the focus was on non-stimulants. An approach that I agreed with; why should I go on stimulants if other medications worked as well. I tried several medications, and to me not only did they not help me, they made everything so much worse. It came to a point where I was done with this approach. The medications that were not cleared for ADHD did more harm than anything else, and I had no doubt I was looking to be medicated to deal with ADHD / Executive disfunction. Strattera, which is the only non-stimulant medication for ADHD showed some promise, but didn’t quite do “enough” to help with the executive disfunction which for me is severe; and not surprisingly the providers shifted to blaming me for “not doing enough on my own”; as if they had any clue the distress and ongoing struggles I’d dealt with for a lifetime.

Spring of 2024, I was financially in a very difficult place, was severely food insecure, frequently hungry, overwhelmed with the legal aspects of applying for disability; and the struggles with medical prescribers at The Guidance Center became the last push for me to become suicidal for the first time in 12 years. I disclosed the suicidal ideation to my therapist, Candace. With absolutely zero assessment for risk, ie plan / intent, Candace decided to issue a 72 hold and send police to pick me up.

I was taken to The Guidance Center PAC unit for evaluation, and I brought my service dog with me out of necessity. It was late in the evening, I was alone in my van in a dark forest when the cops found me – and frankly, I was terrified. Law enforcement is dangerous for someone like me; someone who lives nomadically, in the forests; and someone with my political stance. For people with more privilege that might be difficult to comprehend, but someone like me is as likely to get a “blanket party” as we are likely being taken some place safely. To me, Candace had chosen to put my life at risk by sending law enforcement. To be clear, Service Dogs have legal rights in hospitals including in psychiatric units.

The next morning, it was decided to remove my service dog in a format that violated ADA laws, and I decided to make all efforts to advocate for myself and my dog. At the very least I wanted access to my phone so I could ask friends for help to care for my dog while I was in-patient; it was denied in full violation of my rights.

What happened after this was a full ethical and legal break down – and to me it was assault. I am still dealing with the aftermath of this.

7 people entered my room and piled on top of me to remove my dog; including two animal control officers who were admitted to my room in full violation of my HIPAA rights, staff had interacted with my dog enough times to know she wasn’t dangerous and the officers were not needed. I was sitting on the floor, wearing a hospital gown and holding on to my dog. I was not a danger to myself, I was not a danger to them, I was not verbally confrontational or demeaning – and I certainly was not threatening. I knew I and my dog were in danger and I was doing my absolute best to avoid the assault. After the assault, I collapsed on the floor and cried for several hours. That night my vitals were off the charts high (blood pressure and heart rate), I was 100% in stroke and heart attack territory. In the late evening I reported chest pain to my nurse; her answer was “well, since you wont take your medications I can’t help you”, thereby denying me safe medical care; I was afraid what other laws they would violate and refused medications out of fear. Let there be no doubt, the fact that I did not die that night was luck – but The Guidance Center has had someone die in their PAC before. In 2016 a developmentally disabled man died in PAC, it is believed that he was not checked on sufficiently for more than the 15 minutes when they are supposed to check on people. If The Guidance Center saw any consequences from their negligence then it has not been published; it is my suspicion that they did something tiny like firing a psych tech, and moved on with their day.

The next morning the 72 hour hold was lifted, and I was taken to Flagstaff Medical Center ER for medical evaluation. I left their PAC unit on a gurney and in an ambulance. My vitals had stabilized before I even arrived at the hospital, but they had to do a full evaluation because based on my previous readings I could have had a heart attack that night.

My treatment at The Guidance Center, following this was nothing less than appalling and cruel. Candace, my therapist, maintained that she had done everything perfect and refused to acknowledge accountability for issuing a 72 hour hold based on suicidal ideation, NOT based on suicidal risk which is the industry standard, and is the ethical approach. For all practical purposes we had knock down, drag out verbal fights about this, and Candace started to take her frustration and anger out on me verbally. She made statements to me such as “my communication sucks”, “I couldn’t take “no” for an answer”, and other demeaning, dehumanizing comments. I cried. I cried, and I cried like whipped. This was a person I trusted, a person I had allowed myself to feel attached to, and during a time when I was incredibly vulnerable she yelled at me; after having taken actions that to me put both me and my dog in severe danger. I kept showing up, and I appreciate my own courage to do that, but much of the time I showed up and simply dissociated into non-verbal or low verbal states. I only remember some of the sessions during that period partially due to dissociation.

Simultaneously, after 12 years without either, I started to have flashbacks and nightmares; and these were not pretty. The flashbacks spanned multiple periods in my life when I had sustained severe trauma, and then overlapped each other. I had trouble keeping apart what happened and when it happened – one email I wrote to Candace at that time goes into detail about the sexual molestations by my mom. I had nightmares that woke me screaming my head off, to the point where someone once called the police to do a well-fare check on me. I emailed my therapist, I told her about the flashbacks and nightmares – and she yelled at me for going quiet in therapy, for dissociating and for my struggles expressing myself.

During this period I was hospitalized about every other month due to suicidal ideation with plans / intent, this means I was hospitalized about 4 times the summer and fall of 2024. In addition, I had an uncounted amount of ER visits due to dehydration as I continued struggling to take care of myself. All of my psych admits during this time were self-admits, ie I walked myself into the ER and told them I was suicidal; I also made sure to arrange care for my service dog on my own in each of these hospitalizations.

Eventually Candace and I found some level of agreement, even if fragile; and I still didn’t want to change therapists, given that I believed that Candace cared about me. This might have been both stupid and naïve, but my situation was precarious in so many ways, and changing therapists was not something I felt able to do. During this time my ADHD remained untreated as I was focused on PTSD / Flashbacks and nightmares. I also became phobic of going to medication prescribers after my experiences at TGC. At the time of writing this article (April 2026), I remain phobic of medical attention and have not been to a new doctor over a year.

In March of 2025 an unlicensed case manager, and her unlicensed supervisor, decided to issue a second 72 hour hold, again based only on ideation with zero attempts to assess plan / intent. This is when I finally got angry; really angry, spitting, enraged, furious – I am not sure I have words for the incandescent rage I experienced at that time. Suffice it to say, I’d had enough! The hold itself was never enacted. Police showed up at the address where I was staying, which was a house owned by friends. My friends told them to come back with a warrant, and Candace got the hold removed the following day – but still, I’d simply had enough of their law breaking. It is my assertion that The Guidance Center acts with impunity in Flagstaff, AZ, and that someone needs to step up and hold them accountable. 72 hour holds MUST be based on more than “I wish I could be dead”; suicide assessment consist of: Suicidal wish (ideation), suicidal plan (a realistic plan for how to kill yourself), and intent (I intend to do this plan within 24 hours). This is both the legal and ethical demand – it is not a suggestion, it does not give clinicians the space to just hospitalize because they feel “uncomfortable”, a full assessment must be done, full stop. People with ideation but no plan / intent can be supported to stay home, and that is the ONLY ethical approach unless they choose to be hospitalized.

I filed a complaint directly with The Guidance Center, and was given a run-around of fake “empathy”, and absolutely no resolution or even promises of training. At this time I asked simply that their front-line staff by trained in suicide assessment, this could not be promised. I also asked to speak with the CEO or Director of Mental Health, as this is where decisions about training would be made. Yes, I did want to be a part of these decisions; as a stake holder I felt I was owed that.

It took about 45 days I think, but then I lost my shit and started to file complaints with AHCCCS and medical boards. Much of this was ignored due to statute of limitations – but the fact I started to file complaints became an obstacle in my relationship to Candace, and I started to see multiple hospitalizations again. During this time I got my medical records from The Guidance Center and discovered that Candace had written about me in ways that was simply cruel, as well as dishonest – she also started a diagnosis of “PDNOS” that I was never told about. My suicidal ideation absolutely exploded, the relationship with Candace ended abruptly, with no real closure, and I finally attempted suicide – and back in the hospital I went – this was the 7^th or 8^th hospitalization since May of 2024 in PAC. I was however (thankfully) able to consent to the hospitalization and make my own arrangements for my dog again. Since then, I have made more attempts to communicate with The Guidance Center and request a resolution that I can live with than I can count – it is more than 5 times I have requested they engage in resolution – all of which has been ignored.

My record on Medium should be seen as a living record of how I navigated the incredible amount of hurt, harm and pain that The Guidance Center subjected me to. I am thankful I survived; it was not a given. And, I have frequently thought that they would have preferred my death over what happened here. There are few legal avenues left to me for them to see accountability, and as with the person, human being, that died on their watch in 2016, my harm was not something they ever cared about or saw any real accountability for.

Candace was issued a formal letter of concern from her licensing board in December of 2025. In April of 2026 Office of Civil Rights issued a letter reminding The Guidance Center of their HIPAA obligations. The rest of my complaints fell on Statute of Limitations – ie were never investigated. (I sincerely believe that The Guidance Center and NARBHA were able to use connections at AHCCCS to make sure my complaints were never fully investigated, but that is belief and not proven).