Have you ever been lied to by a mental health professional?

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Not that I really have been. I don't even know if I have been. I know I'm probably making a big deal about nothing, but this bothers me a little. Some of you know that I was committed for 2 weeks recently. Jack and I went to the NPC, one mental hospital, after he asked if I wanted to go, because I was paranoid and depressed and he found information about it online. I said yes, I wanted to go, because I knew I needed to go back on my antidepressants and they could get me a prescription. So I go there and tell them the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about how I feel, and three women interviewed me. One was the intake person, one the counselor and one the doctor, I think. The counselor asked if I just needed my meds, or if I thought I needed to be taken in and evaluated for a few days, or what. I didn't comment about being taken in, I just said "I really really need my s**t, I know I do." So later the doctor says she's going to admit me and try different meds on me, and me and Jack are pleased because they actually care. I have all the symptoms of Bipolar I except the hallucinations, unless you count my black holes, and that's my main problem. I know they're going to say that's what I probably am but they never came out and said it; they just asked if I had a family history of this or that. She said she was going to lock me in with the people who were locked in, but just so that I could eat or lie down if I wanted to while waiting for the cops to come and take some of us to the Harris County Psychiatric Center. I didn't know I was actually diagnosed with Bipolar I until four days later when a women came to me with a bunch of court order papers saying there was a court order to have me committed, I was a danger to myself and others, and I was deteriorating to the point of dysfunctionality. They make me sound really bad, and I was, but not quite that bad; they never gave me quite enough credit; I had no plans to harm anyone. Or rather, they gave me too much credit. I wasn't quite there yet. I would have said yes if they'd asked me if it was okay if they took me in. Part of my problem in the first place, what made me so anxious and paranoid and depressed, was feeling like people wanted to tell me what I could andd couldn't do and control me and tell me what to do. It wasn't bad in there. Nobody laid a hand on me or forced me to take anything; they said I could refuse it but they would have to write it down. Who knows how long I would have been in there if I hadn't taken the meds. They were really nice and helpful for the most part. I'm just paranoid I guess, that's all. I didn't know about the court order or anything until the fourth day there! So if I'd tried to get out before, would they have let me out? I wonder.

I have only met one Mental Health Professional, the one I met did not lie to me. Are you feeling okay now?

i can lie to em if option is mental

I feel lied to, but I could have just jumped to conclusions here. I found out yesterday that my psychologist didn't diagnose me with Asperger's like I thought he did. I just assumed he did because he said he was pretty sure I have it. I'm going to take a test to get diagnosed for sure.

non stop lies from all hospital stays. i had one psychiatrist say you cant cure disease. Had a social worker bipolar is just like diabetes. Had a medical doctor say you get all the nutrients you need from food. Had a psycologist say the incidence of mental illness is the same the world over.

A psychiatrist is a human being. You cannot expect perfection from a human being. Nor can you assume that they are mind-readers given their job-titles. There is nothing about the mental health industry that pleases everyone one, every time. Judging by the nasty comments I've read on this forum, I'd say most WP users are ready to practise psychiatry on their own.

The sentiment goes, "If I really loathe a doctor or nurse or counselor, they must be an embarrassment to their profession."

I wish these comments would stop.

I was told that I'm not asperger.

I am sure they don't mean to lie. Maybe they are just inexperienced. It is better to go to someone who knows there stuff.

Kinda I suppose, not really a lie though, I just think it was inexperience coupled with not really listening to what I was saying. This was back when I decided to give medication another try. I also have Bipolar I, and I'm constantly on and off medication. This time I was serious about it....I know I'm playing with fire when I'm not on medication (but hey, I may have a mild case of pyromania). After a particularly nasty mixed episode (dysphoric mania) I swore I'd never let it happen again.....I went to a crisis center, then into the care of a new psychiatrist.

This one thought I might need an antidepressant combined with an antipsychotic....at first I thought she was nuts.....I knew what antidepressants did to my sister. I already was manic....I didn't need any more serotonin in my temporal lobe. Sure enough I was euphorically manic in a week.....the nice kinda of mania when all the colors are pretty, everything is beautiful, and so on....the kind where you don't blink an eye about spending $10,000 at the mall on your lunch break....I enjoyed it for a moment, then asked to be taken off the 10mg of Lexapro, and possibly for the Seroquel to be increased.....it took 300mg to finally get me to feel only a bit hypomanic.....but something was happening to me.

My vision was becoming distorted. Walls would breathe or vibrate....the lines on the road would wiggle like snakes....I would see things move that didn't.....colors would shift the longer I looked at them. My synesthesia became more intense. I couldn't look at a computer screen or lab notebook without seeing colors everywhere (they didn't fade to black like usual). I began getting tunnel vision, or losing my vision. I stated getting sick to my stomach. I could smell phenoxyethanol everywhere....I could taste burnt almonds.

I tell this to my doctor and she tells me just I'm psychotic and hallucinating, and increases the dosage to 600mg. I'm 105lbs and only a little hypomanic at this point.....so that kinda put me in a stupor, but the issues with my vision got worse. The nausea got worse, and so did the room spinning, walls breathing, colors shifting and so on....One time I passed out in the shower and hit my head....I would start to lose minutes here and there, kinda just zoning out.....

I brought this up to my psychiatrist and she just kept insisting I was manic and psychotic.....then I told her I wasn't seeing pink elephants.....these weren't hallucinations....something was wrong with my brain.

I went to a neurologist and had an EEG and a PET scan. My visual cortex was lit up like a Christmas tree...I had constant seizure activity in my visual cortex. I was having partial seizures....a rare side effect from the Seroquel. So I was prescribed Klonopin and Neurontin to control the seizures and instructed to have my doctor ween me off the Seroquel.

Eventually I gave up on the medication altogether, the seizures stopped and I went back to playing with fire.

Never lied to on the basis of treatment or diagnosis. I've been commited a couple times one time for 20 days and another for longer. Sometimes the doctors think they know whats right, and some don't really care. I had this one who basically put everyone on the same meds. Me I'm known to not take crap from people. No one liked this doctor and one day, I can't recall why, I threw a plastic potted plant on her head. I got strapped down and injected(By the way this is one of the most helpless situations someone can go threw. To pee and nurse comes in opens the part of the pants and then pee into a bottle still stapped down) After words I was treat great, not that it was bad before, by the workers because they enjoyed seeing the doctor like that and wish they would have.
One time in there we were lied to and not allowed to watch TV for a long time, 9/11 happened. I really feel like I missed something that nearly all Americans went through.

Wouldn't say I've been lied to, but I still harbor a lot of resentment towards the clinical psychologist who wrote a letter to my school including the sentence "As a person with AS, Alex has no theory of mind and no imagination".

Now, I might forgive her if she was just copying from a dated textbook about AS, but I'd been having appointments with her for months and attending her Social Skills/Self Esteem group... she knew me quite well, and she knew all about my CREATIVE and IMAGINATIVE interests. She also knew that on my WAIS assessment, I was shown to have a perfectly sound 'theory of mind' in most instances, despite my low scores in other areas.

I feel that she was just lazy and felt that it was easy to copy-paste some rather rigid and inflexible ideas about people with AS, without doing credit to me as an individual with my own weaknesses and strengths.

I feel as if the adolescent mental health professionals at the hospital keep things from me like extraneous mental health illnesses and always deny there is any such service to help me.

My psychologist thought I am so clueless that I wouldn't notice him charging my medical aid for 7 sessions a month instead of the four per month that I had with him. ASS. So much for trust.

Yeah, I hate psychiatrists who charge for imaginary sessions. That makes me mad enough to chew nails. I think we've hit on a vast worldwide conspiracy against aspies and auties. The psychiatrists have been against us since the beginning.


We're through the looking glass now, people.

i was "voluntarily" commited to a psych hospital a few years back. i had attempted suicide (after i stopped taking Paxil cold turkey) but my live in girlfriend at the time found me and got me to the hosital. i was unconscious for 2 days in the ICU, but I came to and they kept me there for a few days for observation. i had a psych come and talk to me and asked me if i'd be "ok" with going to a "special hospital" for a few days, maybe a week, just so they could make sure I was OK.

i felt like i was fine, and my head was clear, the paxil thing had played itself out by then i guess, but once they got me in the psych hospital, that was it... i was in there for almost 3 weeks before they finally let me out.

it was really cool for the first few days, no responsibilites, plenty of rest, all you can eat 3 meals a day, etc. etc. but once you get it in your head that you want out, and they won't let you go, it's basically prison. (just a really nice prison) i had my whole family and even my employers visiting and trying to get them to let me go, but it was no use. they were gonna keep me until they were good and ready to let me go. in fact, the only reason i think they let me go when they did was because i finally told them flat out that i no longer wanted to be there and that i wasn't going to pay them for anything beyond my first week. (and i never did.. i paid for 1/3 of the bill and nothing more. i called a lawyer and he found some loophole that kept them from being able to pursue me for the rest money)

my advice to anyone is this: if you NEED to be in there, because you are suicidal or a risk to others, by all means, you need to go. but if you are in control of yourself, and think you can just go for a few days to "unwind", your best bet is to find another way to do that, because once you are in, no telling how long before they let you out.

Lying is part of the training in parts of the psych system, as far as I know. It's expected that patients can't handle the truth.

It's also taught to people... like a friend I have, who's autistic, but who worked in a group home for awhile. And they were explicitly taught to lie on incident reports in order to make everything the clients' fault and never the staff. That saves them from having to discipline staff for doing things wrong. That kind of thing happens a lot.

She was fired for charting the truth.