According to my psychologist I am suicidal. I want to sue.

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I know. I was wronged and can't do anything to defend myself or at least voice my complaints without being taken for a lunatic. I must suffer in silence: that's the saddest part.

Last edited by Mw99 on 24 Dec 2008, 12:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

Things like a psychological report are highly confidential. They just cannot release records such as that. Did the report cause any verifiable damages such as you losing a job?

I know. I think a lot of Aspies have had that experience. We're so sensitive to injustices and when we make noise, a lot of people can't stand to hear it.

But you know, I don't think you have to defend yourself. You are not at fault here. Please try to rest easy in that. I think that people can see you for who you really are, much more than you know.

I visited my psychologist's office seven years after my last visit. The psychologist didn't work there any more. The secretary didn't work there any more. No one I knew worked there any more. They asked my name and date of birth. They asked my date of bith in order to "confirm" my identity. No ID required. I was given access to my records.

Last year I also requested another psychological report from some other psychologist. The psychologist and I were unable to schedule a meeting, so she offered to leave my report with the secretary. The next day I went to the office to pick up my report, and the secretary only asked for my name. To add injury to the offense, the envelope containing my report was open.

It was in Navy boot camp under unusual circumstances... Boot camp itself is an unusual circumstance and then I had some additional contributors. That was however the first time that I had ever contemplated a specific method of executing the act. There may have been a small handful of other occasions on which I had thought about it in a much more generalized sense (there probably were), but few, brief and far between. And now I don't remember them anymore.



Umm... no it's not that black and white, generally speaking.

People don't stay in one psychological state throughout the course of their lives, they move through a variety of psychological states. Those states may include bouts of depression or for that matter bouts of extreme euphoria. The fact that you may have been suicidal at one time in your distant past isn't necessarily relevant today, in fact, I'd say in a lot of cases (if not most cases) it's not relevant today. The answer to "have you ever thought about death" doesn't make you suicidal -- it indicates that you may or may not have been suicidal in the past. And if your answer is "yes I've thought about it a lot during a bout of extreme depression every Christmas for the last decade", then the odds are fairly good that you have a history of experiencing suicidal bouts. But by the same token, you may not be thinking about your own death but rather the loss of a family member that occurred during that time of year. It's up to a psychologist in the present tense (not in the past) to ask the right questions to discern the difference.

And a person who answers "no" isn't necessarily lying. They may merely be accurately interpreting the intent behind the question. If the intent of the question is to address whether or not you think about killing yourself with regularity, then it's not lying if you say "no" because you've never actually thought about killing yourself. That's true even though you certainly have thought about death or suicide in a more general sense, because the context of the question isn't about whether or not you've read (and maybe laughed at) suicide parodies. It's not lying if you're providing an accurate answer to the question's intent, even if the question itself is poorly phrased.

I think you're taking things a bit over-literally here.

Wow, I'm glad I found this thread before going to a psychological exam.

I don't think that a day goes by where I don't in some way think of death or what the world would be like without my existence.

Earlier this autumn I was very suicidal and constantly thinking that my purpose in life was served and that I should find a clean way to end it. I could have explained those thoughts with complete truth, but at the same time I still wanted to continue living to see if life would send me more inspiration. Even if I had pills, a gun or a large building to jump off of, there would be no way I would ever want to go through with it..

I often feel as though life is a storybook, and I was born as an observer and the main characters of the storybook are the people who are closest to me. If I were to die, I would never be able to see the ending. (Sorry if this doesn't make sense - I really don't know how to describe it in any other terms)

A psychologist could read through this post and diagnose me with something inappropriate like delusional schizophrenia without ever considering that my odd perception of life could be due to autism or Asperger's Condition. If psychology is willing to improve its procedures, the practitioners need to be willing to do a little extra work to determine whether or not there may be any explanation for odd symptoms besides a label of insanity.

It's up to the psychologist to determine whether the patient is being serious, facetious, defiant, devious or plain dishonest if he gives her a "no" for an answer. "Have you ever thought about death?" It's a poorly phrased question that begs for clarification. I believe questions such as that one are purposely poorly phrased to see if the patient shoots himself in the foot by interpreting the question in a specific manner that reveals more about his mental state than any actual answer the patient may give. It seems that the answer to the question is not just the answer itself but also the patient's intepretation of the question he was asked.

Last edited by Mw99 on 24 Dec 2008, 8:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's it.

There's far more going on when you see a psycho/psychic than how it appears on the surface.

Hey Daniel, do you know of any literature that delves into the subject of all the hidden things that go on during psychological evaluations?

Well, then you were not "suicidal". There are many different meanings to the term "suicidal", and the professional's report should have or would have contained an explanation that gives technical details.

For example: "suicidal ideations" are ideas and thinking about killing yourself, not just feeling that you want to end your life, or that you don't have purpose in life, etc. "suicidal ideations" include seeing yourself jump off a building or imagining yourself putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger.

Then, to further classify, you have "suicidal ideations without a plan" and "suicidal ideations without a plan" and so on. When you have "suicidal ideations with a plan" you have thought about where to get a gun, how you would go about getting onto the roof of a building and whether you would write a suicide note. I.e. you are in the planning stages.

And so on. The questions that a psychologist asks when interviewing about suicidal feelings are pretty cut and dried. All those questions Mw99 was asked map to a specific framework. The fact that the professional was competent and he got benefit from the relationship, but he just disliked that "suicidal" language, means that your problem is actually with the definitions, not the professional using it.





Not really, there is a clear, widely used technical framework that is very specific. You should only be worried if your psychologist doesn't appear to be professional or smart enough to be doing stuff like applying these definitions in a competent way.

Last edited by ephemerella on 24 Dec 2008, 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

This is one of the many examples why I'm glad I don't have common sense. Because common sense says a person has no idea what they are talking about until they get that piece of paper from a college that says they do, in this case, a phd. My sense dictates that anyone can cheat through school or get an A without learning anything, and you don't need a PhD to research the same studies and topics a professional does. Also, my sense tells me that a person can know the facts and still have no ability to apply those facts to real life (in other words, they can lack critical thinking skills), but I think they try to teach that ability in the graduate programs for clinical type careers like psychology. i mention the critical thinking also because I think some people forget that requirement to be good at diagnosing problems and applying therapy. My sense also dictates that the pharmaceutical industry has some of these medical professionals bought, and a PhD doesn't confirm moral substance or ethical behavior. In addition, studies have shown that psychiatrists are the top medical professionals getting benefits from the pharmaceutical industry who gets lists of perscribing patterns from private companies tracking pharmacy data and then rewards doctors that perscribe a lot of their pills. I think a lot of that is because there is more bias and opinion in a diagnosis made by psychology than a family doctor treating a cold. It's also funny that disorders treated with pills such as ADHD and depression are more common now than ever. Does anyone think it's because we know more about it, or because we have more pills for it?

First, it doesn't matter in my example who wrote the book. The teacher and high school promoting the book were NT's at the least. I wouldn't ever had to think about that question if it weren't for the NT's promoting journal writing either.

Second, the psych eval would be applicable because if you were evaluated by these people or talked about the evaluation before seeing a pscyhologist that asks you if you ever thought about death, you could honestly say you did without having to be suicidal or without it being AS related.

Third, the psychologist never asked, "Do you think about death outside of specialized reasons?" So, yes it's applicable to a very general question. Because NT's don't realize they think about death doesn't mean they don't think about it. When people die, they think about it, even when on the news. After 9/11, they thought about it. Talk of war, they think about our marines dying or the enemy we kill. Every Easter, they mourn the death of Christ and rejoice his resurrection. Most churches talk about everlasting life after death. Don't forget reincarnation and theories of death being just a new beginning or concept of change. Death is a highly discussed topic in the NT world. Suicide and suicidal thoughts are not. So if the psychologist asked, "Have you ever considered suicide, or ending your own life," then we'd be talking about more of what you are trying to say.

The fact that they seem to forget what they thought about in the past is the exact reason why the psychologist should have followed that question with another question such as "In what ways?" for the respondent to say something like, "Well, I had to think about it when deciding custody of my children in my death for purposes of creating that will...it really made me think." It has nothing to do with the patient being AS but the psychologist being an airhead idiot. In addition, what if the patient's father just died? Who doesn't think about death when in the grieving process? Do you know how many grief patients psychologists see on a regular basis? The even have groups meet regularly on the subject.

Do you want more attention? Is that it?

To the original post... YOU KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO?

This is what I would do if in the situation. Because it was seven years ago, you may want to do some research on the psychologist. You could always go back and explain what happened and ask the psychologist about it and try to have it removed.

If that doesn't work, then what I'd do is you know psychologists have to be licensed to practice. Report the situation to whoever issues that license (usually a state thing I think). You could probably find easily who the governing authority is when you visit the office by reading all the papers on the wall as I think they are required to display their license. You never know, the psychologist could be acting on a phony license.

She's right. The more education I get, the more I realize what screwups are out there in white collar world.

All this economic collapse and everything could have been avoided, for example. It really is not that hard. It's just that a lot of professionals out there can't do their basic jobs.

I don't think this is the OP's problem, in particular But that can be an issue.

This thread goes to show you: a psychiatrist or psychologist (hereafter, referred to as "therapist") is NEVER your friend. They're your doctor, your treatment specialist, your life coach, but they're not, and never will be, your friend. How so? They'll spend many sessions helping you resolve your issues, but as soon as you mention death or suicide, they'll do a complete 180, turn against you, and report you to authorities. (Yeah, they're required to do that by law, but still.)

Here's a rule you can use. Just as you would never say "bomb" in any context (or even similar-sounding words, such as "bum") on an airplane, don't ever say the words "kill", "die", or "suicide" in a therapist's office. The only exception I can think is saying that someone you know died, in which case, it's a good idea to talk about it, and the therapist won't target you for it.

Why do I make it sound so rough and cold? Because that's how NT society is. It's like the police staying one step ahead of drug dealers. Every time dealers think of new tactics to evade law enforcement, the police learns about the tactic and tries to counter it. We need act the same way.