Patient experiences are the only data that mental health professionals have to study mental illness. Patient experiences are the bread and butter of any scientific endeavor in the field of mental health. I do not know where you guys went to college, but to relate patient experiences to anecdotal accounts show a lack of understanding of scientific study. Collection of data is the first step in the scientific study of any subject. In mental health, data pertaining to the patient is the only data there is! Dr. Colin Ross talks about this in his book. He collected patient medical history, patient mental health history, home environment data, work environment data, patient alcohol abuse history, patient drug abuse history, etc. He wrote down everything that the patient told him about growing up in the family. If he could he interviewed parents and grand-parents and collected the same data on them. That is how he gained the knowledge to develop his theory that early childhood traumas caused multiple personality disorder.

To discount my experiences..., first the mental health professional totally is disrespecting me, but secondly it shows a total lack of professionalism and intelligence of scientific methods.