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Originally Posted by CrispApple
Not really.I don't know of any mental health provider that is going to immediately start treating someone for a self diagnosed disorder without confirming it first themselves.
Maybe that's where you have been going wrong,by telling them what you have and expecting to be treated for it?
Maybe it would be better if you allowed them to do the diagnosing?I know I said it before,but I feel if you have a dissociative disorder a professional will recognize it eventually,maybe not in a time frame you would like,but eventually they would.
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Let me use some of my engineering logic to try to explain this issue. When a person tells a psychologist or psychiatrist that he/she believes that he/she has a dissociative disorder, that mental health professional should immediately delve into the patient's childhood! That is common sense from just having a basic knowledge of the cause of the mental illness. I started going to Dr. Penny Gardberg, a PHD Clinical Psychologist in January 1992 and went to her for almost two years. I told her the first day that I thought I had a split personality. She never delved into my childhood.
Dr. Gardberg referred me to a Dr. John Tatum, a Psychiatrist. I went to him for almost a year. He, of course, thought I was just clinically depressed and put me on drugs. By the time I started going to him I had learned that they had changed the name from split-personality to multiple personality to dissociative disorders. While I was going to Dr. Tatum, he had me do a whole bunch of psychological tests with a PHD psychologist that worked with him. I am ashamed that I do not have any copies of those tests. But again Dr. Tatum never delved into my childhood.
After I stopped going to Dr. Tatum, I drove out to Dallas and put myself into the Charter Hospital just so I could talk to the patients.
These are the ways that a mental health professional should approach a patient who claims to have a dissociative disorder: First discuss the childhood experience. If there was obvious abuse or trauma during early childhood then a Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD diagnosis should be given immediately. And, the mental health professional should suspect a possible dissociative diagnosis. It is that simple and that is one reason I am mad.
Dr. Ross published his book in 1980. I did not start going to treatment until 1992.
The next thing a mental health professional should do in treating the patient is to describe the mental illness to the patient's loved ones so that they understand what to look for in the patient and help!
When my wife, Molly McKinnon Harris and I started having problems, we went to a Dr. Ronnie Zuessman in Orlando. He was the first mental health professional that I told that I had a split personality. That was sometime around 1990. In front of my wife, he told me that was an extremely rare mental illness and that I was probably just clinically depressed. If he would have immediately asked me about my childhood and we could have discussed the abuses that I went through from newborn to five, and then told my wife Molly about the diagnosis so she could understand, I might not have gotten divorced! Molly, I am sure could have proven the dissociative disorder by discussing the communication that went on.
I have a milder case of dissociative disorder but it is still a dissociative disorder. The reason that I was not diagnosed as a child goes to the fact that my Father and Mother were emotionally sick people.