I have not written in my blog for a very long time. Today I am compelled to do so because I am sick to the back teeth of patient blaming by professionals.
My entire experience of the healthcare system has been predominantly with psychiatry and the mental health sector. The minute I set foot inside that sector the blaming started. In fact it started before that with the GPs. Why was I in my bed, why wasn’t I getting up to help my mother? Then the mental health sector. I was irresponsible, immature, too dependent on my mother, didn’t wear high heels, didn’t want to look like a woman, was attention seeking (overdoses), they even laughed at my poor appetite. What they did not notice was that I had rapidly become very unwell after being prescribed a benzo by a neurologist. My appetite was suppressed, I lost quarter of my body weight within a few months, I didn’t look like a woman, some people thought I was a boy! I felt like absolute shit physically, mentally, psychologically, emotionally and yes I had tried to kill myself despite never having thought of suicide prior to consuming benzos. I didn’t feel like getting dressed up in the latest fashions, with my high heels on to attend a psychiatric hospital just so I could look like a sexy woman! I can just imagine what they might have said if I had, then they would have said there wasn’t much wrong with me!
And the blaming did not end there. They didn’t tell me the drugs caused aggression so when I became aggressive of course I was blamed for that too, not a word was said about the cause. I was restrained because they had prescribed these shit drugs which cause aggression. I was blamed because they had prescribed shit drugs that cause constant suicidal thoughts, impulses and suicide attempts.
One psychiatrist started to probe my childhood memories, suddenly very painful memories (not sexual abuse) resurfaced, I started to hallucinate, I was terrified and started to scream on a hospital ward. A meeting was convened to discuss my unaceptable behaviour, suddenly I was moved from one hospital to another with no explanation. I walked out of the ward and attempted suicide again and this time it was nearly fatal. I went back into the ward and was told I might spend the rest of my life in a psych hospital, I was to be sectioned and given ECT. My husband was consulted and he said a flat “no” to being sectioned and I said a flat “no” to ECT. I knew full well I had no need of ECT, I knew why I had just tried to kill myself, the psychiatrist never asked. However, he never again consulted with me alone. He knew!!
So coming to today I see the pattern of patient blaming time and time again on social media. Injured patients are trolls as they desperately try to get their voices heard to prevent harm to others. Injured patients have a victim mentality and perpetuate their own suffering. Injured patients are so stupid and irrational they think that because one person (themselves) has been harmed they suddenly want psychiatry and all psych treatments abolished. Harmed patients generalise form their own personal experience, well of course we do because of the hundreds and thousands of other harmed patients that we know about, goodness knows how many there must be in total. Again we are seen as irrational. I have been labelled a liar, a murderer and a criminal and all by Twitter psychiatrists.
Who is the crazy one here? It most definitely is not me.
nevertrustadoctor 