Cross Post from the Lounge:

Does that count? And I'm bitter and angry about it, it has caused far more serious problems in my life than I had before. Ok, I should clarify some things, before all of DU thinks I'm another Mark David Chapman or Jared Loughner.

I was very depressed and doing impulsive things, overall pretty minor, ok, one thing was pretty major and very dangerous, not typical of me. And a great deal of mental fog, confusion. Very hard to function at work. Extreme insomnia, panic attacks. Then I got death threats from a very mentally disturbed client, and it was a tipping point.

So, I found a psychiatrist through a hospital physician referral website. Made an appointment. Went there looking for professional help to make things better.

Instead, after 5 minutes of reviewing the forms I filed out, and less than five minutes of talking to me, she told me I was bipolar, that I was a danger to myself, that I had to be immediately hospitalized, and implicitly made it clear that if I didn't comply I would be reported to the mental health authorities, who would go through the legal channels, bottom line, the sheriff would come knocking and drag me in handcuffs to the psych ward against my will.

I was completely shocked and shattered. It all happened so fast I didn't even have time to think rationally enough to ask for a second opinion. I went looking for comfort and help, and left there feeling degraded, humiliated, dehumanized, utterly lost, and I felt some kind of criminal.

I'm a nice guy, I've always tried to do the right thing in life, I've never hurt anyone in any way. Sure, I have problems, but I was trying to deal with them in a responsible adult manner. This shattered me in a way that I can't even describe, it will take me years to rebuild what little self confidence I had. I was never truly suicidal before this, yeah, I thought about it, but it wan't something I wanted to do. I went to this quack because I wanted to live a better life.

I left her office cruising down the freeway looking for a concrete support column of an overpass that I could aim for at 90 mph and effectively end my problems. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of how it would destroy my mother if I killed myself like that.

I should have been far more diligent in checking out this doctor ahead of time. I did it after the fact. I found out she has terrible patient reviews on online ratings sites, and patients describe her as a bully, thug, quack.

She wanted me to check myself inpatient immediately. I did stand up that much, told her no way. So, she "let" me do what they call a partial hospital program aka "day hospital". And it took three weeks to arrange and start. Longest three weeks of my life, and I had one hell of a shitty life, including a father who denied paternity and liked to point guns at me and tell me what a shame it was that he couldn't blow my fucking head off because he didn't want to go to prison. I felt like I was given a death sentence, and that my only possible futures were to die alone in the gutter in the slums of Detroit, or to end up in prison or in a locked psych ward. Pretty hard to take for a middle class guy from a nice suburb with two college degrees whose only brush with the law was getting a ticket in 1994 for going 32 mph in a 25 mph zone.

So, yeah, I spent three weeks in the psych ward. I wasn't locked up, no locks, no guards, no a nurse Ratched to lobotomize me. Nice hospital, got an hour and 15 minutes every day for lunch, they had a great food court area, one place had good sushi. I went into this crushed, broken, expecting to die and wanting to die. Two hospital staffers, the nurse/case manager and the therapist, along with my own long-term therapist, saved my life, mostly just because they were kind and treated me like a good guy who was just in a bad spot and needed some help, not like some scum of the earth criminal who should be taken out back, stood against the wall, and shot. I will be eternally grateful for that, it's what saved me.

I'm doing a lot better now. It's still not easy. My family hates me now, this has caused a lot of problems at home. I'm financially about as fucked as I can be, I lost an entire month of pay over this. Enormous medical bills are rolling in, my part after my crap insurance pays what it pays, and the only way I can pay them is by tapping into my retirement fund. I held onto my job by a thread, it's still dicey. So, it's kinda rough. And I'm doing everything I know of to fix this mess. It could have all been done outpatient, discretely, without causing all of these other problems.

I found a new psychiatrist yesterday, it was night and day versus the first one. This one seems very kind, very personable. We talked about what happened, I told her yes, I understand the why of it, how any psychiatrist could have concluded I needed something beyond strictly outpatient. But it could have been handled so much differently, in a much gentler way that didn't shatter what little was left of myself.

It will be a pleasure today calling the quack, canceling my followup, and telling her I am never coming back.