So true! As a teenager, I started having bad vertigo, which my GP blew off as psychosomatic. When I started passing out, he labeled it (at my mother's urging) as attention-seeking behavior. Finally, after about a year of worsening symptoms and a doctor who refused to do anything beyond basic labs, I had a seizure, passed out, and quit breathing at school. They sent me to the ER, and the docs there immediately did a brain scan. Turns out I had a very large congenital neurovascular defect that required brain surgery. If I'd continued to go undiagnosed and untreated, I would've had a massive stroke or aneurysm.

A year and a half ago, while I was at an inpatient trauma program, I started getting severe GI symptoms, which quickly progressed to severe diarrhea, vomiting, excruciating pain, and major bleeding. But when the psych hospital sent me to the medical ER, the intern there decided I'd somehow done this to myself with an overdose. (I don't know how she thought I got anything to overdose on from a locked psych units, and my symptoms weren't a fit for any overdose.) It wasn't until my blood pressure crashed to 50/40 that she finally decided I might have an actual physical illness. I was diagnosed with fulminant-stage (i.e., "you're about to die" stage) ulcerative colitis, which is a life-threatening autoimmune disease.

It's like they think crazy people can never get physical illnesses, and it endangers people's health all the time. Even with a documented UC diagnosis, I still routinely get accused of drug-seeking behavior when I go to the ER, even though I have no history of substance abuse. It's complete BS.