Neighboring residents to 2840 Sandestin Drive will soon enter a new year of living near northwest Reno’s SAI residential psychiatric treatment center, which some have a called a nightmare.
It’s not just the neighbors complaining though. A mother of one of the patients admitted to the facility earlier this fall, who wishes to remain anonymous, spoke out against the SAI treatment center calling it “an unprofessional business with such poor, poor communication.”
According to Reno public record reports at that address, 57 calls were made to emergency services from September 2023 to November 2024, ranging from suicide attempts to runaway juveniles.
There were six calls due to suicide attempts from December of 2023 to November, and 11 runaways within that same time frame.
The Department of Health and Human Services - Division of Public and Behavioral Health defines facilities like SAI, to be “... a facility, other than a hospital, that provides a range of psychiatric services to treat residents under the age of 21 years on an inpatient basis under the direction of a physician.”
The Bureau of Health Care Quality and Compliance (HCQC) provides licensing to residential treatment centers in Nevada. In addition to its HCQC licensing, SAI has been accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF).
The mother who spoke to Our Town Reno is based in Nevada and has sent her child to various psychiatric facilities within the state in the last year to try to receive help with their mental health struggles. Sending her child away was one of the hardest challenges she’s had to face as a mother, she said.
After having an unsuccessful experience with a Las Vegas-based psychiatric hospital, she was recommended to have her child see Dr. Dharmendra Goyal at Reno-based SAI Mental Health.
The residential treatment center page on the SAI website does not show the residential home.
The mother says that when she looked up SAI Mental Health, a facility on 5865 Tyrone Rd was shown, which helped her feel assured that her child would be in a safe, secure hospital setting.
After her child was relocated to Reno from Las Vegas, she found out that they’d not been sent to Tyrone Rd, but to a residential home. She says she immediately began feeling weary about inadequate security at the location.
She wondered things like: who was living in the house with her child and the other patients? How many other teens were in the home? Are there security guards? How many doctors are on site?
“They [providers] were shady there… I was never told they were going to a house. I was told they were going to a facility. I found out about it after, when they were already there at that house that I never approved of,” she said.
The mother says her experience with SAI was unnerving and stressful. “I was the one calling most times…One of the times they sent my kid to the ER…and nobody communicated that they were there. I found out because the emergency room called me asking for consent to treat them,” she said.
Then, shortly after her child began residing at 2840 Sandestin Drive, she said she received a call from SAI telling her that her child recently escaped the facility and was nowhere to be found.
“When they were out and about looking … one of the staff members there told another parent that if they found my child, just to take them,” she said. “Just like that, they gave a stranger permission to take my kid.”
After three days of searching, she says Reno PD located her child on 4th street, in downtown Reno, intoxicated and staying at a homeless encampment. Her child was suspected to have escaped the facility with the help of another patient and was later returned to SAI.
Shortly after this incident, the mother says she relocated her child to a different facility outside of Nevada.
She now shares the sentiments of neighboring residents who want the facility moved. At the beginning of October 2024 she says the property was listed as sold on Zillow, giving her hope other mothers would not have to go through the same ordeals as she did.
After calling the facility and speaking with one of their providers, though, it was confirmed that SAI is still operating there and was undergoing refinancing, but maintained ownership and licensing.
According to the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health, the last investigation of the facility was done in March, as a result of numerous complaints to the treatment center.
The complaints filed with the state have included workers blocking sidewalks with their vehicles, youth heard fighting and screaming, and a runaway trespassing on private property.
Four complaints were investigated that involved alleged patient abuse, unsupervised patients, and lack of proper response to safety threatening scenarios.
It was deemed that the allegations could not be substantiated due to lack of evidence.
SAI has said the house setting offers a sense of safety in the treatment journey of young patients there. The facility’s owner psychiatrist Dharmendra Goyal has said complaints against the facility are false.
Both Goyal and Jeanette Bussey, the CEO of Sai Mental Health, worked at the West Hills Behavioral Health Hospital, which was shut down in 2021 after four decades of operation, prompting them to open SAI Mental Health.
“It was really painful to see the patients with nowhere to go with mental health and substance abuse needs,” Bussey, the former Director of Outpatient Services at West Hills told KOLO News in 2022. “We determined that we needed to open an agency that would hopefully fill some of those gaps.”
According to Reno city officials, group homes such as this facility are allowed in Reno’s residential zoning districts, without the need for a public hearing or public notice.
At the national level, a just passed and signed into law Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act is aimed at preventing any abuse of minors taking place at rehab and other residential facilities.
"Children across the country are at risk of abuse and neglect due to a lack of transparency in institutional youth treatment programs," Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna said in a statement, leading this legislative effort along with celebrity heiress Paris Hilton. "The industry has gone unchecked for too long. Paris Hilton and other survivors of abuse in this broken system have bravely shared their stories and inspired change. I'm proud to lead this legislation with my colleagues to protect the safety and well-being of kids."
Hilton lived in a series of residential treatment facilities as a teenager, testifying before Congress in June that she remembered being violently restrained, stripped of clothing and tossed into solitary confinement.
The new law just signed by outgoing President Joe Biden is meant to create federal overseeing structures for youth residential programs and the placement of minors in rehab and other facilities. It is also directing the Department of Health and Human Services along with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to make recommendations about state oversight of these programs.
Report contributed to Our Town Reno in December 2024