Published on 12, July, 2020
K. Tonight I am rocked to my very core. Still shaking.
I'll try and keep a very long story as short as I can. I need advice.
All MH services have ever done for me is traumatised and re-traimatise me. Now, they really have gone too far.
Some six years ago someone close to me was poorly. They handled it badly. Statutory guidelines were disregarded in terms of us as carers, Nice guidelines and sheer common sense were ignored. As a result as carers we were left to face genuinely life threatening situation after life threatening situation to the point my loved one almost died and we were at risk before they intervened. He is better now but tells me now "they were not nice to him". I, as his carer, had PTSD as a result.
I went through the complaints procedure. Health watch wanted me to go to the ombudsman. It almost did. I ended up with a full written apology on all counts and an hour long call from their chief executive to apologise.
I have life long medical phobias. I needed medical treatment which sparked a chain if events landing me in the lap of MH services myself. They failed to recognise the autism underlying it even though "autism' should have been screaming at them from my every interaction with them. That I forgive. Johari's window and all that...I did not know I was autistic and they had inadequate training to know. That they never listened to me and made a 1001 mistakes in my so called "care" and seem to have a blame the patient culture, I do NOT forgive.
Finally, having figured out my autism for myself, having spent a small fortune on assessments and autism informed counselling myself, and just starting to get some progress now after so much battling I've been in total burn out...something came to light today by total accident, which has me apologetic with rage...
In respect of my divorce my solicitor asked for a GP's letter...only as a consequence of that do I discover that in 2019, those services made a diagnosis of "emotionall unstable personality disorder", which only on googling do I discover is the same as "borderline personality disorder".
Obviously, there are some people who do have both. And I mean no disrespect to those who have to combat both ASD and BPD, but I know the latter is a misdiagnosis because they didn't understand the ASD/PTSD in my case.
Point is, how in God's name is it possible for a diagnosis to exist on my record WITHOUT anyone EVER having told me!??? How am I hearing it even exists by accident??? Surely to God, that's not just the most monumental of *** ups, but completely unethical.
I once reached out to MH because the person l love most in all the world was in danger. They let me down and I was traumatised. Despite that, I reached out because I was in distress. And they betrayed me. BPD??? Which one of us is sick here? Me? Or the effing service? I am re-traumatised.
I have enough trouble just now trying to find a safe way to access general medical care and negotiating a divorce with out having to fight this battle too. I'm starting to think I really need to protect myself somehow from the people who are supposed to help?
Any advice on how MH should behave, and what to do now, appreciated.
The mental health services are still behaving unethically in the UKI have come to the conclusion that ethics are out of fashion.
You are not alone in your suffering as a result of trusting a service which was supposed to help!I also have been so traumatised by their treatment of my two daughters and myself that I can never trust them. We are all on the spectrum, but I am sure there are misdiagnoses on files about all of us. The problem is we are female and intelligent, far too complicated for male psychiatrists to understand. They are wired differently.
Peg said:The problem is we are female and intelligent, far too complicated for male psychiatrists to understand. They are wired differently.
Ah yes. Perhaps we should assess them using a deficit-based model of our own devising?
And see how they like it, huh? I'll help you devise it.
Yes, my experience too. It really felt as though we were on parallel lines and yet my impression was that they went away thinking they'd been helpful. My own medical notes have been screaming "autistic" for decades now, yet I only eventually got a formal diagnosis at the end of 2018. And MH teams only seem to be gettng their (mostly minimal!) autism training now.
There is a very clear training need.
Looking back "autism" should have been stamped all over my every interaction with them. It's no wonder I constantly felt like they and I were speaking two different languages the whole way through.
The power imbalance really bothers me. My abiding image is of a young family member in an extremely vulnerable state being visited by a consultant and two social workers whose sole purpose seemed to be to (mis)diagnose and section them. Without strong allies to support the person, these professionals could really just do as they saw fit, even though it was obvious they had NO autism training and had nothing to offer inside the hospital that they couldn't easily offer outside it.
I'm just appalled by it all.