Mental illness is still massively misunderstood

I dont claim to know a lot about the subject, but, i am begining to think that many diagnosed with a nental health condition, have a neurodevelopmental condition. Misdiagnosis is keeping the mental health practitioners in jobs. Prescriptions are handed out to easily. My feelings are very mixed, from anger to liberation. At 59 finding out that i am autistic. Repeatedly prescribed antidepressants, switched from one to anither every time i had a melt down. I didnt know. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD last week. He was diagnosed as autistic last year, aged 60! Repeatedly told he has a typical personality disorder! I know velieve i also have ADHD. OMG. What will i do now? Seek a diagnosis and get the correct treatment, i have nothing to loose now. I am dismayed. Years ago, like my mother, and many others we would have been placed in a mental institution, drugged. People are still being wrongly drugged. I think you can tell how i feel about this. My respect for mental health practitioners has gone. 

I dont claim to know a lot about the subject, but, i am begining to think that many diagnosed with a nental health condition, have a neurodevelopmental condition. Misdiagnosis is keeping the mental health practitioners in jobs. Prescriptions are handed out to easily. My feelings are very mixed, from anger to liberation. At 59 finding out that i am autistic. Repeatedly prescribed antidepressants, switched from one to anither every time i had a melt down. I didnt know. My brother was diagnosed with ADHD last week. He was diagnosed as autistic last year, aged 60! Repeatedly told he has a typical personality disorder! I know velieve i also have ADHD. OMG. What will i do now? Seek a diagnosis and get the correct treatment, i have nothing to loose now. I am dismayed. Years ago, like my mother, and many others we would have been placed in a mental institution, drugged. People are still being wrongly drugged. I think you can tell how i feel about this. My respect for mental health practitioners has gone. 

In regards to the mental institution point I agree; in my culture (as I have Carribean background) if you have mental health or autism (same applies to other disabilities) half the time the family don't care - they will just sweep everything under the rug and avoid dealing with you.

I am lucky my parents have been (and always will be) supportive of me when it comes to my autism but can't say the same for extended family or family friends. I recently had a panic attack at work and a family friend said I was deliberately putting it on and saying some nasty things about my personal life and how I am "educated enough" to get over it. They even brought up how my deceased cousin (one of my only other close family members who was murdered mind you) would be disappointed in me. 

This is why I remain no contact with family nowadays, because they will never know what it is like to be in my shoes.

I agree with you. Years ago many of us would have been put in big insane asylums. Now I think many people are just ignored and excluded from society and as you say given random drugs.

My instinct is that so-called mental healthcare “professionals” start from a standpoint of point-blank refusal to understand anything about mental health conditions including autism and if they are not encouraging a culture of ridiculing and bullying of people with ASD, they are dismissing as “nonsense” and discrediting everything that we say, with statements along the lines of “you don’t understand that you are the only one that is wrong by default and that everyone else is always right” and as far as they are concerned, if only we would just “keep quiet” and just be “seen and not heard” in all instances, by default, regardless of the facts and circumstances, one size fits all, which they are fully prepared to rigidly enforce by all means, however abhorrent