Families Across the U.S. Panic Amid News that Fortune 500 Giant,
Universal Health Services, Inc.,https://www.uhsinc.com/ to Close Country’s Only Provider of a Life-Saving Mental Health Treatment by the End of December.
Parents demanding answers; pleading for continued access.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend thousands of families across the U.S., who have been helped by pediatric neuropsychiatrist Dan Matthews, M.D., a pioneer in the field of mental health, panicked as they learned his life-saving program — the only one of its kind — based in Austin, Texas, is being forced to close by December 31, 2019, by Universal Health Services, Inc. Parents from as far away as Alaska are joining forces and willing to share their personal stories in order to help save Dr. Matthews’ medical protocol, so that other children can be helped too. They are also demanding answers from Matt Peterson, the new Executive Vice President of UHS, and President of its Behavioral Health Division, why a program that’s backed by decades of research with proven results be abruptly eliminated.

By the time parents find Dr. Matthews, they have navigated a flawed mental health system for years trying to find help for their child’s explosive and impulsive aggression, known as Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD), which commonly gets misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder. DMDD develops before age 10 and often results in parents and siblings getting PTSD, as they live daily on high alert, sometimes isolating themselves. After numerous medications, sometimes hospitalizations, with no positive results, parents start to lose hope. That’s until they find Dr. Matthews and get to Texas so their child can undergo a unique brain scan that was developed in the 1970’s that gets to the root of the problem, then treated with a successful medication protocol. Parents are relieved to learn their child has electrical abnormalities in their brain that are not only responsible for their explosive rage, but can be successfully treated with Dr. Matthews’ groundbreaking medicine protocol. Families call the results nothing short of miraculous. “We have a different child!” “Our child, family and marriage has been saved by this breakthrough.”

With no successor in place, and no other locations offering this service elsewhere in the U.S., families are demanding answers from UHS, and are willing to fight not only for the services to be maintained but for access to this pioneering mental health service to be increased. Since time is of the essence, please shed light on this story, before it’s too late.