I read through 87 pages. It wasn't easy, but I got through it. I couldn't have done this in 2016 when I was given some of the records by my psychiatrist. Those documents stayed in an envelop for 5 years until I finally had the courage.
I'm feeling many different emotions. It's hard to fully understand why I ended up as an inpatient at the house on Smyth Road. There are patterns and themes to what I read and a lot of non-compliance. I can now see why they misdiagnosed me with a stigmatizing illness. Some psychiatrists even acknowledged that in their notes.
The records are filled with "feelings of being unheard". That describes it quite well. I felt minimized and judged. Being heard and validated would have made a huge difference especially with compliance.
Psychiatry was like the bully who tortured me for 5 years in the school yard. No one was there to back me up, just like when I was a child. That is probably why this period of my life hurts so bad.
There are a multitude of diagnoses, but the focus was on the stigmatizing one. The attending I was assigned to was fixated on it. That was all she saw. One of her residents dictated a few of the summaries. In his assessment he noted my autistic traits, thinking they were a part of the schizophrenia spectrum. He also noticed I had an anxiety disorder. No one noticed that back then due to cognitive bias. He actually almost figured it out.