This is a bit of a piggyback on the "Do you feel shame..." post about hospitalizations, but the more I think about my times going inpatient (particularly my first time), the angrier I become. They were incompetent and negligent.

A team of doctors, nurses and psychiatrists missed antidepressant induced mania from their own prescription. They apparently thought it was normal for suicidal patients to do a 180 in 12 hours from their antidepressants.

Oh, but they weren't done. When I was initially admitted, I was given so much ativan, I lost a day and a half of memory.

It gets better. My psychiatrist when I was in there decided I was not just depressed, but autistic. Why, you might ask? Because I hadn't been laid. That's it. Way to give someone a complex.

Finally, my therapist reacted with visible fear when I asked her to print something off from the computer. I'm a big guy, but quite frankly a teddy bear, so that hurt.

Out of all of this, it's the fact they missed the antidepressant-induced mania that stung so much, because of course I'm not going to complain about coming out of depression with the snap of my fingers. I wasn't diagnosed with bipolar until two years after this IP visit, during which I started to rampage (metaphorically) through my academic and social life to such an extent that I'm still picking up the pieces. It makes me angry just thinking about it.