Adult female diagnosis. Pros, cons, and process

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don't remember if I've already mentioned this, but for exactly the reasons you' mention, I would only seek diagnosis if I could afford to do cash pay and wouldn't inform anyone else that I was even seeking diagnosis, much less what the result of testing was.

Each and every day I am thankful that I was finally diagnosed, although the sheer hell I went through before I was has probably shortened my lifespan by 20 years at least. When I was 21 I was forced to live in a group home with over 10 people suffering from schizophrenia and other chronic mental illness. I had next to no privacy and the staff often saw my desire for it strange and rude. Then I was put in and out of several other homes with fewer people but they were constantly switching staff and residents. Every few months I would have to deal with the abrupt changes which would make me very hostile and my meltdowns (the staff called them outbursts), got more frequent and severe. I was put on all kinds of drugs with awful side effects where I couldn't eat or sleep or focus on anything. One summer I went to the hospital maybe a dozen times because I was reacting so badly to the drugs they kept putting me on. Eventually I just hated the whole human race and couldn't take it any more, and I had really bad insomnia, and I started getting sick a lot with all kinds of infections. I was angry all the time and felt I should be sad and crying instead but I wasn't, instead I was screaming and swearing at people, even using the F-word which is highly unusual for me. It was like I had turned into an evil, violent, dangerous monster and the staff firmly believed it was all behavioral and blamed my mother and other family members. I'm so glad I finally got out of that hellhole and now have a place of my own where I can live quietly and comfortably, ALONE, where people can't judge me for my unusual obsessions or my lack of social skills or my sensitivity to clothing and makeup, and I don't have to clean the entire apartment or get up at dawn to do chores every day, and no one is there to constantly open my bedroom door just to check on me or order me to do my "daily hygiene", or lecture me when I can't cope with the other residents. I really wish I could sue them for what they made me go through, or even worse. And I'll never really get over it. I still have dreams where I'm suddenly back in a home with no memory of how I got there, and I want to leave and go back to my apartment but know I can't because someone else has already moved into it. To be put back in a home or the hospital would be a nightmare come true.

I would love to get a diagnosis, but where I live I can't even get help for my depression. I went to my local mental health clinic and they turned me away with no help. I don't know what else I can do I just feel stuck. People don't know what I go through in my head. I stay in bed all weekend long. They think just because I have a job that I am not so bad off.