money and social status (which is a combo of a bunch of factors...prestige, education levels, etc.) --definitely-- have played a big role in the treatment I've received.

When I started this journey, I was the 17/18 year old, bright, somewhat precocious offspring of respectable, white collar, middle class professionals. Good enough to be treated OK, but then...not so much. Middle class respectability only goes so far, I suppose.

Now...I'm considered a "genteel mental patient" because my people are now on the more affluent end of (I guess...) the middle class. At any rate, they're above "middle class respectability," but not rich. They're also well-educated, established, blah blah blah.

Its strange...I get disability, in large part because the shock "treatments" left me unable to do much of anything for a while there (notice how the government has to pick up the tab for shrinks' behavior, and then the patient is called a "parasite" ?), and I now go to a community mental health clinic. And yet...

...because I now have my people solidly behind me and they're somewhere above middle class, I get treated with decency, compassion, I get some input into my treatment, I've been labeled "Bipolar I," not all that crazy alphabet soup (ODD, NPD, OCD, GAD, APD, etc.) stuff from before. I've also now been spared the label of "Schizophrenia," which is what my small, southern community has labeled me (note: "Schizophrenia" isn't a diagnosis; its a label and a social role...), and..basically...

...as "treatment" goes, I get decent care. I get the sort of care that people in severe distress need, but (it seems...) few of us actually get. You get about as much compassion as you can afford --or-- as much as you "deserve," based on social status and other variables.

Its lame, to say the least.

I should also note that social status (or, in my case, my loving, long suffering family's social status) affects --everything-- . I'm now diagnosed "Bipolar I." My IQ estimate has been raised from the 120 pre-shock "treatment" estimate (I don't know how high it is now, just...its been raised higher, so I guess its outside the usual range of error on these sorts of estimates...). The psychiatrist books me for 30 minute talk sessions (this is an over-booked, community mental health clinic, btw). If I seem somewhat out of sorts, or if I forget to brush my hair, I get booked to see the shrink in 8 weeks. If I seem a-OK, its 12 weeks. Some people at this clinic go far longer w/o seeing the psychiatrist.

I'm not saying "madness" or distress aren't real, or even that the psychiatric drugs don't help some people, at least for a season. I'm saying...my experiences have led me to believe that this is not real medicine, and not real "help," either, at least not for a lot of us. And that disturbs me.