Dr. Mathew Lam Nguyen, MD

It’s been over 10 years since I’ve been treated by Dr. Nguyen and I’m still negatively impacted by it. Dr. Nguyen’s “method” was to break you down and build you back up again. Except all he was ever capable of doing was breaking patients. When Dr. Nguyen saw me I was at a very low point in my life. I was 16 and struggling with PTSD from repeated CSA, an eating disorder, and severe depression and anxiety. During my stay at Shands Vista I was seen for suicidal ideation and an eating disorder. He would make me write letters about how I was a burden to my family. How my illnesses inconvenienced and burdened my family. How my eating disorder or suicidal ideations were selfish. One time he told to write about why everyone would be better off without me. He would make me read these letters in my next meeting with him. He’d get angry if I didn’t cry, yell at me and tell me “I can’t tell you care. I can’t tell you’re sorry. You’re not even crying.” Then when I’d start crying he yell and say “I… can’t understand a word you’re saying. You’re hysterical. You need to calm down and stop crying so I can understand you.” None of that is an exaggeration, it’s unreal the things that man would say and do. The entire time this happened, a whole team of UF students/residents would just sit and watch as he did this to one child after the other. Sometimes I wonder about those students and where they are now. What they thought and felt as they watched us shake, cry, and hyperventilate. All the nurses were aware of his abuse. No one ever did or said anything. No one ever stepped in. On the mornings we met with him I would watch multiple children have panic attacks and break down in tears both before and after meeting with Dr. Nguyen. The nurses would watch it too. He prescribed me an antipsychotic which I had to stop taking shortly after starting it due to severe side effects. I am also not diagnosed with any conditions that medication is used for (even off label use). I still think it was negligent and reckless to prescribe a 16 year old this medication when nothing indicated it. I was at Shands Vista Pediatric Unit and Eating Disorder Recovery Center (EDRC) for 3 weeks total. On my final day I got in massive trouble because I exchanged letters with one of the girls from I was on the unit with. They searched her room the night before and found mine. We had both exchanged social media info, which went against the rules, though it was something everyone did. I got put on isolation, but was sat out in a desk in front of everyone. I was not allowed to speak or look at anyone. Nurses would tell you to put your head down and tell other kids to stop looking at you if you looked around. It was like some sort of public humiliation ritual. So that’s how I spent my last day on the unit- still suicidal, still depressed and sat silently not able to participate in programming because adults needed to power trip over a child breaking a rule. It could have been resolved with a simple talking to and the personal information being removed from the letters. It was insane. I’ll never forget how disgusting and shameful I felt. I had to write letters on why I was a failure, why I should be ashamed, and how I wasted my last day in treatment because I broke the rules. It was absurd. I continued to struggle with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and PTSD. I struggled with an eating disorder for years, but spent 9 months in a lovely treatment center and have been recovered since 2017. I still often think of my stay at Shands Vista. If I watch any medical shows involving the abuse/mistreatment of psychiatric patients I get flashbacks. Sometimes I just get them without any obvious triggers. I’ve experienced a pretty traumatic inpatient stay as an adult as well, but it really pales in comparison to this for me. I think what really stands out to me is there were SO many people that witnessed this abuse. No one said or did anything. It was pretty clear the nurses k

Heartless, cold and narcissistic. I’m still traumatized 10 years later by the fear he instilled in me and the other patients at Shands Vista. His approach toward suicidal teenagers is one he should be ashamed of. It is ineffective and should be considered abusive.

I first came under his care in 06-07 when I entered vista for depression and bulemia. I was eager to receive treatment - my mom had explained what vista was, explained how they could help me, and I willingly requested to be admitted. My first time meeting Dr. Nguyen, I was led into a room to be interviewed by him at the head of a table filled with other mental health professionals watching. In front of this room of strangers, Dr. Nguyen began demanding I admit that I hate my mom, fake depression to hurt my mom, and became bulimic for attention. I refused to admit any of these things so he had me taken back to the main room to sit at a small desk and write “I am a liar” over & over again, front and back, on lined paper for an hour. Being dismissed as a patient came, not from healing, but from agreeing to say anything he told me to say at that table of strangers, holding back my tears, and not showing emotion. For the rest of my childhood and into my adult life, I continued with bulimia… but learned how to expertly hide it. I never felt safe confiding in my mother or seeking professional help with the disorder again.

I had the misfortune to meet Dr. Nguyen when he worked at Vista. I was sent there for a suicide attempt in high school, and I will never forget how this man treated me and the other kids in the unit. He was a miserable, awful man, and he took great pleasure in making us all feel small and ashamed. He told me that “maybe I should have been successful” in my suicide attempt, and I have never forgotten that. He made children cry every day. I hope that one day he faces some kind of justice for his cruel mistreatment of some of the most vulnerable people. It’s a travesty that he is still allowed to “practice.”

Wow!! I'm so amazed at all the reviews echoing my exact experience when I crossed paths with this villain 17 years ago. At age 30 I'm still recovering from this man's malice and negligence, as he misdiagnosed me at the age of 13 with bipolar disorder, and that diagnosis was treated as law until only a couple years ago. Late last year, I was diagnosed with autism, after I began to suspect in 2022 I was misdiagnosed and VERY overmedicated. Well no wonder the lithium and 9 different antipsychotics I was put on over the uears didn't work! But no, Mr. Nguyen said I was a "bipolar poster child" and he is such a talented psychologist, it must be true! He diagnosed me after speaking with me for 10 minutes, dlwhere he told me I was an idiot for having attempted suicide. I was confused, and he told me only idiots hurt themselves, so why was I being an idiot? I cried and told him he was an asshole. He said I was having a "classic" manic episode and I was put on a godly dose of olanzipine. I'm… not bipolar, certainly not classic bipolar. In fact, I'm a pretty classic autistic woman in every way. But I've been treated for bipolar for the majority of my life because of this evil man. I'll probably be healing from his malpractice for the rest of my life, as my adolescence was utterly ruined, and those years are quite formative. The distrust of clinicians of all kind is permanent, however. Honestly, my skepticism has served me well. I encourage everyone reading this to practice skepticism in all things - but most of all, be skeptical of authority figures such as Mr. Nguyen. I hope you all reading this, his victims, are also on the road to recovery. Maybe we should make a support group for people he failed. I'm joking... well, half joking. But wow, he is just a consistently awful person, isn't he?

I am heartbroken to read these reviews and see that Dr. Nguyen is still the cruel, aggressive, and small man he was when I was his patient 10 years ago. The University of Florida forced him out because of the way he treated patients, and it is a travesty of justice that he is allowed to continue with this behavior at Meridian now. I met Dr. Nguyen when I was a teenager struggling with an eating disorder. I am now an adult who works in the mental health field myself. I know that these reviews may seem emotional or like they were written in the heat of the moment, but I promise you that they are 100% true. I have had the benefit of time to sort through my feelings about what happened to me when I was in Dr. Nguyen's care. I understand that treatment is not supposed to be fun, and that liking your psychiatrist is not a prerequisite to healing. That was not the case with Dr. Nguyen, though. He abused his patients and, through his leadership, taught the staff to do it as well. On a… personal note, Dr. Nguyen caused permanent damage to my relationship with my parents. They did not believe me for so long. Now that they understand what happened, they live with the guilt of knowing that they allowed it to go on as long as they did. I am less of a person than I would have been if I had never met Dr. Nguyen, and I grieve that. If I could go back in time, I would have publicly blown the whistle about Dr. Nguyen. It might have prevented all this suffering. I have to live with knowing that I failed the patients who came after me.

he is a beyond awful doctor, and i use that term loosely because i don’t even know how this man still has a medical license. i was in the meridian behavioral health facility under the baker act back in september of 2022 while only being 16 years old. the way he treated me was so awful and it still is a very sensitive subject to this day to the point where i’ve been refusing to get any further mental healthcare assistance from how he traumatized me and made me feel as if i don’t deserve to receive any help. he accused me of only wanting attention and hurting my parents and how i deserved to feel the way i did. he made me write awful essays about how i’m an attention seeker, how i enjoy seeing my parents in pain, as well as how and why i self harmed in excruciating detail and why i deserved it. he would make me read these letters out loud to the people that sat in the room as well as my parents. the therapists degraded me and they would inform the doctor if i cried which was punishable… and looked down upon. i was afraid and didn’t even want to speak at that point. thankfully i didn’t stay for long (a week) since my parents demanded them to discharge me but Nyguen has definitely traumatize me and i left that place feeling worse than when i came in. please avoid this doctor at all costs. all he does is degrade you, tell you that you deserve to die, and put you on medications that will make you feel like a thoughtless zombie. send your children to get help elsewhere, because this doctor will only harm them and lead them to a worse path than what they are currently on.

I'm not one to leave bad reviews ever, but everything that everyone is saying is true. This man is horrendous...

When I was 12 years old I was admitted to Shands vista for my anorexia. At 20 years old now I am still dealing with the trauma this man has put in my life. From being forced to writing my mom letters on why I enjoy her being in pain because my eating disorder was selfish, and told he was going to take me away from parents and I would never see them again . Also hearing him yell at other patients. I never realized the trauma was spread to others till reading his reviews. I wish I could still do something to hold this man accountable.

He is the WORST Doctor I have ever met. You leave the facility feeling way worse than when you came in. He prescribed every patient Abilify no matter what diagnosis they had. I now feel more insecure than I ever have in my life because of his weird and nasty comments made unnecessarily! I stay sick now because I am truly afraid of this man!