And this is not the only time this has happened. I see posts from people claiming to be mental health nurses and techs online who show little compassion for the mentally ill.

One (alleged) nurse told me that people "like me" were violent and dangerous and shouldn't talk to each other. She basically said her years of work made her opinion the truth and said a bunch of other offensive things about mentally ill people.

When I told her how rude and judgmental she was being, she responded that she didn't hate people with mental illness, she found them "interesting". Gee, thanks?

It makes it hard to confide in doctors, social workers, etc. when I know that behind their masks of understanding, they really just think I'm disturbed and crazy.

Has this ever happened to you?

I was in the hospital for my eating disorder, and one of the MTs came in to watch us and whatever. She was still in school and had worked on some of the other floors (each floor corresponds to a different mental illness) so she had learned a bit about and had a bit of experience with psychotic patients.

So she started talking to the ED patients about how much she was filled with awe about schizophrenia and whatnot. Basically saying that the human brain is incredible, and could you imagine experiencing the world like that? What if that was your reality? It had an undertone of "we need to try to understand these people" and seemed generally positive.

So because the atmosphere was friendly and I was feeling more open about sharing what I've been through, I started talking about my experience with the illness (hallucinations and delusions because the other stuff is harder to explain).

And she (the MT) and the other patients just gave me a look like I was utterly insane.

Like, WTF? Don't fake compassion and then act all freaked out and disturbed when you meet an ACTUAL PERSON WITH ACTUAL PROBLEMS.