OE, actually, your experience and mine with psychiatric hospitalization are eerily parallel. You were inpatient, I was in a day program only because I refused to do inpatient even though the witch first told me I had to IMMEDIATELY go straight to an ER and admit myself.

For me, THAT moment was the defining moment of the entire fiasco. I went to a doctor for help, and I expected to receive it in a comforting, caring manner. Instead, I got the iron fist of punishment. The way she did it, too, it was implicit to me that if I didn't do what she told me, she was going to take it to the next level and call the authorities and report me as being a danger to myself. That is why I panicked, and that is why I caved.

The first words out my mouth to her, literally, were that I needed this to be kept COMPLETELY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL and that I would ONLY do outpatient treatment (not that I considered inpatient even a remote possibility, I was just laying the ground rules). The first words out of her mouth were "you're bipolar" and "go to the ER and admit yourself". I was just stunned, completely shocked, and I was completely unprepared for that. And that moment is what destroyed my spirit, and that moment is how I ended up on a dock three weeks later with an implement of self-destruction. Not because of the guy who threatened me at work and started the panic attacks. Not because of my father. Because this quack treated me like a criminal that needed to be locked up.

Your experiences were just as traumatic to you. Being locked away, misdiagnosed, and treated that way destroys trust in the system, and leaves a person bitter. Which I am, and which you no doubt have been as well. Your experiences with the way your family reacted is a key reason why I chose to keep this covered up. It's all a very stupid, horrible situation.

I don't know of any other medical issue which has such stigma attached, with the exception of HIV back in the early days. It's sad and pathetic that we are in the 21st century and have to deal with not only all of the medical issues themselves, but the whole stigma thing.