Thank you for sharing. Reading these types of posts always helps to remind me that the system needs a reset.


I am a few years shy of 20 years without a change in my quality of life since becoming unwell. I have had several wrong diagnoses that were serious, and most caused direct harm to me, in the form of permanent bodily damage induced by psych meds, and horrific stress responses conditioned into me whenever I interact with mental health.

Recently, I got an appointment for a 4 hour session with a psychologist that took months to get. So the day came, and it turns out they could not provide me ANY services. I expected a structured interview, observation, exploration of symptoms and past diagnoses, an opinion or interpretation of my current problems and suggestions on how to improve, and a clinical assessment to determine if I meet the criteria for any new disorder(s).

They gave me a packet where you read statements and answer with how much you agree or disagree. I told them right away that most of the questions are not relevant to me, and that for only a small amount of the questions I could give an accurate answer. I told them I do not have the life experience. They immediately replied "you are way past 18, you have the life experience". I am younger than 30. The psychologist said they needed every answer filled out. I told them it would be mostly random if I did that. They said it was not random. They were arrogant, narcissistic, and inappropriate (implying they're omnipotent and logical fallacies don't matter to them). I am aware of the statistical nature of these tests, where the answers don't matter, and they look to see if you are like the other people that answered the same test in a very similar way. I do not object to this, but you cannot get usable data when the test subject answers most of the test randomly/inaccurately, and could take the same test and fill out almost all the answers differently. It can't be done. I explained that this doesn't make sense, and it's a waste of time. They insisted I just needed to trust them and do it anyways, because the test was their "tool" and they cannot do much of anything without it. They failed to explain why any of it made sense, or how it would not be a waste of time. I listened to my gut and ended the appointment. They kept repeating, "you can contest the results", but they could not provide any compelling evidence that it would not be a waste of time.


I have had opinions and diagnoses made/changed/removed just by talking to mental health workers without ever resorting to this asinine process. This psychologist was so rigid, they could not work around there being no questionnaire, or produce one that had applicable questions for me (I looked through several).

I have had primary care doctors that I needed to immediately change due to incompatibility, and this person was the poster child for that unpleasant phenomenon. I knew in under 5 minutes. They were late for the appointment, then disappeared for a significant fraction of the appointment to check my records, which they should have done before meeting with me. I have had far worse experiences with others, though. This is just the newest mishap.


I had important issues needing to be addressed, and now I have to rethink how all of that is going to be done. I am pretty close to regarding myself as untreatable at this point, and I'll just focus entirely on physical health problems. I have always done all the work with my mental health, and this will be no different.