Made a request to see my file

Last week I made a written request to see my file at the local mental health service. I'm no longer seeing any specialists there, so my file is closed, but I'm still curious to know what the hell they've been writing about me over all those years! I get the feeling that one or two of my psychologists had made some pretty negative remarks, cos my GP once showed me a letter that my psychologist wrote to him, mentioning I was "resistant to treatment" and "unwilling to utilise the skills learned in DBT". I wasn't unwilling at all - I just struggled to put the theory into practice. I tried my best.

I ended up leaving the mental health service after getting some pretty shitty treatment by a psychiatrist. He was reluctant to see me at all, and when I did finally get an appointment to see him, I could tell that he didn't like me one bit. At the end of the appointment he even told me not to make any further appointments with him, and to just get my meds from my GP instead. What an asshole! I'm wondering if the notes in my file may have given him a bad impression of me. I'm sure most psychiatrists wouldn't be keen to treat a person diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and drug dependence. Not to mention one who's "resistant to treatment!"

My mum, who's a nurse, warned me that there could be things in my file that I don't like. But honestly, that's kinda what I'm already expecting...

 

Hugs from overseas!

The mental healthcare is terrible here too. The "drugs and alcohol specialist" I saw about my alcohol problem said (more or less verbatim) "you're not an alcoholic - you just feel sorry for yourself - go out, make some friends, stop spending your free time on the computer. I think the best way to go from would be for you to take a week off work sick and we'll put you on <incapacitating dose> of <some benzos> then on antabuse because you clearly have no self control".
Huh?! Make your mind up! Not an alcoholic, DEFINITELY not going to suffer serious physical withdrawal (just wasn't drinking enough) but let's give her the drugs anyway.

It's not as bad as a psychologist whinging that someone is "resistant to treatment" though. Again, I sympathise. My psychologist often seemed to think I was being deliberately obtuse when I just couldn't take in everything he was throwing at me.
At any rate - it's surely part of their job to ask "why is she resisting this?".

I'm sorry - I meant to just post a few words of support but it has turned into a rant of its own!

Remember that whatever is written in there is just someone's opinion -- if there are things that are unpleasant to read, try to be objective and see the bits that are true, and don't be hurt by the bits that you know not to be. Or track down who wrote it and kick them in the shin... it's all good.

 

Thanks, and I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with the mental health system! You really have to wonder about some of these so-called mental health professionals. My last encounter with the mental health service here was when I had a major breakdown recently, and the crisis team were called to assess me at home.

After speaking to me for only a couple of minutes, they basically dismissed it all as part of my drug addiction (I had actually been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and major depression long before I got into hard drugs) and literally told me to "get real" and "stop doing that shit".

As you can probably imagine, that made me feel ten times worse, and after they left I did some serious self harming. I no longer want anything to do with the mental health service (although I'm now seeing a counsellor in the drug and alcohol service, and haven't had any problems there), but I am interested to know what's in my file, and have the opportunity to challenge anything that isn't right.

 

tbh hun, NZs community mental health system is known for its incompetence
ffs wen my mum didnt know i was on meth i ended up having my first psychotic breakdown and trying to kill myself so the crisis team were called out and mum was told then that i was faking it all for attention
i was about 43kg and my skin was dry, pale and covered in sores, i had rotting teeth/gums and my hair was falling out in clumps
yet they didnt even suspect methamphetamine use (and P was at its peak of epidemic level then....)

i was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder as well wen i went to see their psych the next day - yet id only seen him for an hour!
he was actually right - i did turn out to hav BPD - but it isnt exactly ethical practise to diagnose someone wiv a personality disorder after meeting them for an HOUR

later they decided it wasnt BPD, it was aspergers syndrome (anyone who knows me wud hav to laugh at this diagnosis...)
then it was bipolar...then OCD (all the while i was getting thinner and thinner and more and more pale with the typical meth mouth and dark circles under my eyes)

finally i got sick of all the BS and i just said to the stupid crisis team the next time they were called around (id told mum i was using by then) 'look...im on P okay.'
THEN THEY WOULDNT BELIEVE ME!
they asked me to show them wat i used to 'smoke P' (i was actually shooting it at this stage but i didnt want mum to know that - she was upset enough to know i was addicted to it, and she assumed that, like the bulk of NZers i used a glass pipe....unfortunately by then i didnt even get anything off the pipe so id given it away to a friend)
mum was there, so i cudnt pull out the rigs and say 'there u go - thanks for the assumption that i SMOKE it....'
instead i pulled out a wooden dak pipe, hoping like hell they knew nothing about the diffrence between a P pipe and a dak pipe
sadly they knew the diffrence
the new diagnosis: BPD and a severe cannabis addiction (i had to laugh at that - i hardly SMOKED dak....)

it wasnt till i cleaned up a few yrs later and mum paid for me to go to a private psychiatrist that i got properly diagnosed - i actually had
-a severe addiction to METHAMPHETAMINE (and opiates by then too) that i was at the time in recovery from
-ADHD (hence why i had low self-esteem, poor impulse control and was so attracted to stims - dexamphetamine has changed who i am today)
-several anxiety disorders, all fairly severe (panic disorder/PTSD/GAD)

after doing 6 sessions of CBT with their clinics psychologist (who was really nice) i actually stopped having panic attacks! i now advocate CBT to evryone - however u need a gd psychologist u get on with, and u hav to do the homework....and continue to use it wen u feel the symptoms coming on in future

i was recently rediagnosed by my psychiatrist (who KNOWS me WELL and is a nice guy - u get wat u pay for i guess) as having BPD
once im off evrything (benzos/methadone/P) then im going to look into DBT

my latest run-in with the crisis team was wen i had to come off another 3gram a day P habit and i developed terrible psychosis
mum had rang up to book me into medical detox but they said they no longer took methamphetamine addicts for detox - they left us for the crisis team
so wen i had my first psychotic episode coming off, i was pulled into a cell at the police station and the crisis team told me basically that i shud b in medical detox - that they cudnt help me!
typical NZ healthcare eh
i went off my nut and got a shot of halperidol but mum was really frightened cos she didnt know wat to do about me
apparently in the country with the biggest P problem, we hav the least solutions to getting ppl thru the wds!
being typical BPD, i got myself thru it by burning myself and hating evryone on the planet, including myself and being on-and-off suicidal for a gd 2 weeks
then started using again, even tho im only using pretty small amounts atm, thanks to u, hun

as for the file thing - i asked to see my file once, and they said i cud if i applied to or something, but in the end i decided to leave it b
i knew there wud b so much in there that wud hurt me and trigger me to hurt myself or use that i just.....didnt want to think about it
sometimes shit like thats best laid to rest
but its up to u, gorgeous, and if theres anything in there that disturbs u, remember im always here for u

is it...obvious....im on the pipe tonight?

 

^ They didn't believe you had a meth addiction? Fuck that. Who the hell would pretend to be a meth addict? 8)

I've been given lots of different diagnoses too... first it was major depressive disorder (which I have), then another shrink misdiagnosed me as bipolar and prescribed me massive doses of medication (lithium, sodium valproate, and then carbamazepine) that I didn't actually need. I'm sure these have affected my health, especially the lithium which became toxic to me several times.

A year or two later I was given a psychological evaluation that determined I wasn't bipolar, and instead had borderline personality disorder. I had sessions of CBT with psychologists over several years, which helped with my social anxiety, but unfortunately not my depression. I then started DBT to treat my borderline symptoms but didn't have much success with it - probably because of my heavy P use at the time.