Quote Originally Posted by Chen View Post
What did these people do when you presented the increased problems to them? And what about the others, I presume they neither helped nor hurt. Would they all refused to do anything else for you when you went back to them? I'll grant its possible that all the mental health professionals in the area are just bad, but I have to imagine that is unlikely. I'd have to imagine there are other people who go to your school who might have similar type issues. Are there any message boards or the like where you could ask how they might deal with it (in terms of which doctors to use). I was thinking a message board since its generally anonymous and people will be more likely to talk about mental health there, rather then in a more public setting where they might be stigmatized because of it.
The nasty bit about the ones that hurt is that they had everything so pathologized that anything I said was "proof." Stuff like deciding that I hadn't really been abused by my ex, but was reporting it because of my "paranoia." Or one who was clearly disturbed by my being a goth and saw that as a big issue - and of course anything I said otherwise was "denial" and "avoidance". Those were probably the worst two. In both cases (and a couple others), the fact that I disagreed and claimed harm was further proof that I was crazy and needed more treatment.

It's sort of a vicious cycle. Most mental health professionals, I've found, don't want to believe that abuse exists in the profession. So frequently if you go in and report abuse, what happens is that you get labelled as "difficult" or "paranoid" or otherwise considered to not be credible.