Tag Archives: drugs

An adventure to Second-Closest-City and Therapist #26

Last week S.M. contacted me with a name of a potential therapist. The one we’d spoken about before for the consultation wasn’t available. I googled this person and was very uncomfortable about meeting with her because she’s a member of a small organization that a large number of people I work with are also part of. The connection to my work was way too close.
I articulated this to S.M. and he was insistent that I needed compromise somewhere with my confidentiality concerns. He wants me to meet with someone even if I am worried about their association with my work and then work through those concerns in the therapy. There’s just no way I could feel comfortable enough to even begin therapy with someone so closely associated.

I believe I made the right decision here and feel further reinforced with this by the fact that at my work this week, the organization that that therapist is a part of came up in a meeting. We are inviting this group to an event in the near future. The organization already contains 1 past therapist from several years ago before I began this job. Had I agreed to meet with this new therapist I might have been dodging 2 past therapists at the same event. Hopefully that one therapist won’t attend this event.

S.M. told me that he’d run out of resources and that he would call this therapist if I wanted to meet with her, but otherwise I needed to find a therapist on my own.
I feel horrible. I feel guilty for bothering him so many times about referrals. He’s really gone above and beyond with finding me therapists in the past so it’s not fair to feel angry at him. But I am a bit angry. I was holding myself together with the hope that he’d find me a therapist and it fell apart.
Part of me wanted to call him apologizing for bothering him so much, but I didn’t because I realized the apology would be a little passive aggressive.

I found one last local place to try to call. They didn’t have availability until January. I can’t wait that long. I had a panic attack while on the phone. I was such a mess, that the secretary put me on hold, saying that she’d try to find someone I could talk to right then on the phone. At some point the call was dropped. I tried calling back, but they had closed for the day.

Per the suggestion of some folks here, I decided to expand my search radius. I discovered that Second-Closest-City is easier to get to than I’d realized. It’s actually easier and faster to get to this further away city than to a lot of the suburbs surrounding my city. This city is far enough away that people are not all affiliated with where I work.

I made a lot of phone calls. Nothing was working. I can’t count how many panic attacks I had. I skipped out on a lot of obligations, because I was too upset to leave my apartment.

I was working on my next suicide method and kept calling my Dad crying. He took over the search for me. I hate having my Dad do these things for me. He’s very busy and I am really trying to pretend to be an adult. But I was falling apart trying to manage it myself.

My Dad found someone for me to meet with who was able to see me a few days from then.

On the day of the appointment I traveled to Second-Closest-City. I’ve traveled through Second-Closest-City many times, but I can only think of one time when I was maybe 12 that I actually visited it.
I was very prepared for my trip. I put together a whole packet of maps and train schedules. I decided I would walk, but spent 20 minutes getting lost and progressively more anxious. It’s scary coming to a new City and not even knowing where the main streets are. I asked a stranger if she knew where I could get a cab and she gave me the number of a cab company.
I waited for 10 minutes, no cab arrived. The time of my appointment was rapidly approaching, and I was worried about waiting for a cab that might not ever show up. I backtracked to a more populated part I’d walked through earlier and found a cab.

I really don’t like taking cabs. It goes against the whole don’t get in a car with strangers idea. I know a number of people who’ve been held up by cab drivers and some who cab drivers attempted to rape. I’m a very tiny person, I wouldn’t be able to do much to protect myself.
Also in a strange city sometimes it can be hard to distinguish legitimate cabs from illegitimate ones. This one was particularly shady, but I was desperate. It had a meter which added some legitimacy to it, but it was very run down and the driver gave me the creeps.
I safely made it to the building where the therapist is located. I had traveled 2 hours from the door of my apartment to the door of his office to discover that he has a buzzer at his door.

He directed me to a waiting room, which wasn’t really a waiting room. It’s clearly a room he usually uses for group therapy sessions. The chairs were all arranged in a circle. At first I thought he was going to conduct the individual session in there! There would have been a lot of empty chairs available for the empty chair technique.
The actual office was more typical, although it was meticulously organized. My first impression of him is that he dresses more like a lawyer than a therapist.

He commented on my outfit and asked if I was still dressed for Halloween. I let him know I dress like this year round. A tactless early comment, but I let it slide.

The first session went well enough that I returned again for a second appointment.

The second appointment went less well. My trip to Second-Closest-City was nice. I conveniently was able to take the same train as a friend who commutes daily to Second-Closest-City. This friend is someone who doesn’t know any specifics about my crazy, but I am comfortable enough with that I shared my reason for going to Second-Closest-City with him. I have a lot of trouble justifying social interaction in my schedule. If nothing else this trip can force me to communicate with another human for a bit.
My friend and I shared a cab, because the weather was bad and he was traveling in the same direction.

I arrived at the office with 3 minutes to spare. A big change from my usual 20 minutes early, where I avoid going into the office until at least 10 minutes of.

He was dressed less like a lawyer this time, but I have a serious comment for you folks: Do not wear brown shoes with a black suit. Fashion disasters make me sad.

I brought my collection of neuropsychological testing to the appointment. The therapist had seemed a little uncomfortable about writing my Ritalin prescription and asked if it could wait until this 2nd session. I figured I should bring the testing so he’d know I wasn’t inventing the ADHD diagnosis myself. I’m really worried that my decision to go so far away might be misinterpreted as something drug seeking.
I’ve given many of my therapists copies of my testing. Some are more interested in others. Based on his questioning from the first appointment, (He asked a lot of neurological and general medical history type questions) I thought he’d want to see them.
I don’t have a good way to make copies. I could theoretically do it at school or work, but I don’t feel comfortable copying my personal private information there. So I brought the originals and asked if he was able to make copies.

He said he could make copies there and proceeded to do so. For the next 15 minutes. The copier was misbehaving. He unstapled and restapled all my reports. Papers were put everywhere. I have to check through all my reports now to make sure no pages or entire reports are missing.

It felt very disrespectful of my time. Yes the therapy session is only scheduled for 50 minutes, but I have to carve out 5 hours in my day when including travel time. If I’m waking up at 5:30 in the morning to begin my day so I can fit this in, then I’d like to get the full 50 minutes.

I get that he might want to avoid having tasks for patients outside of the billable hour, but despite his similarities in fashion choices to a lawyer, therapists billable hours don’t usually work the same way. Their fee should partially factor in doing some tasks outside of the session. This is why the hours are 50 minutes rather than 60. Every other therapist who I’ve given reports to has made copies and given the originals back to me the next session, rather that using session time.
It’s possible that he just didn’t realize how much trouble he’d have with the printer, so it took longer than expected. But I found a similar trend in the 5+ minutes spent discussing billing. He mentioned that I’d not brought a check the first session. I hadn’t realized he wanted me to. I thought he was going to bill my Dad. I asked if he could just send my Dad the bill. He wasn’t very into this idea. he really wanted to sort it out right there.
It turns out he takes credit card. I paid with my American express card. American express has a reputation for charging a lot in fees to vendors. I hope he got charged a lot in fees for being too lazy to send my Dad a bill. I get that maybe a lot of patients don’t pay bills promptly, but my Dad is very reliable about these things. I’m not sure if my credit limit can handle getting too many of these charges. I usually just use it to buy food.

It makes me really anxious to see the sticker price of sessions. When I submit it to my insurance company for reimbursement the cost will go down to 15-20 dollars per session, but to see $500 for the two sessions on my receipt makes my heart rate speed up.

This left less than 30 minutes of therapy time.
We had a very uncomfortable interaction where he asked me if I wanted him to help me. He wanted me to say “I want you to help me” rather than me just answering his question with a “Yes”. I didn’t cooperate.
This and a couple of things made him feel more like a bad “self help guru” than a psychiatrist. He listed the 5 things he felt were important in a psychotherapy session and the 3 types of communication he believes exist. It felt trite and cheap and tacky.

The session was very directed towards talking about my childhood. I certainly do believe that my childhood had a role in the types of problems I have today, but he doesn’t even know yet what most of my problems today are. It’s too easy for this type of therapy to turn into time where I just say horrible things about my parents. And my parents (especially my Mom) definitely messed up in some places, but they were well intentioned. I did not appreciate his efforts to make me express anger about my Dad for a situation where my Dad really had no good options. He’s paying the bill! and basically is a good guy aside from his inability to be emotionally supportive.
I mentioned that I am not going home on Thanksgiving and the therapist reacted much too enthusiastically about this. He hardly knows my situation and reacted as if I was cutting ties from an abusive family situation. My family is dysfunctional in many ways, but not abusive. My reasons for staying here are more academic than emotional.

I much prefer information about growing up to come out organically in relation to information I share about the present. I am suffering here in the present. Yes the past influences that, but the present matters too. Dwelling on every detail of my childhood is not conducive to changing how to feel today. Really, it just makes me more miserable.
Is it unfair for me to seek out a psychodynamic therapist and criticize him for wanting to talk about my childhood too much? I don’t think so. I think a therapy can be dynamically informed while having a present focus.

I mentioned how I’m not fond of the pure free association type of therapy and I prefer when it’s more interactive. He said that he agreed and said that he’d once been in therapy with a classical Freudian-type and had hated that style. I am kind of uncomfortable with that self-disclosure, even though I realize it’s very typical for analytically oriented therapists to have had their own therapy at some point. It felt like over sharing.

When working on the billing, he asked what ICD code I wanted. I’ve been asked in the past what diagnosis others have used for the bill, because they want to be sure I get reimbursed, but never flat out asked which code I wanted. I opted for Major depression, recurrent, moderate, because I’ve had that used a lot in the past.

I’ve been trying to do work on the train, so I don’t feel the time is wasted, but unfortunately I’ve been so tired, that I’ve not been very productive. Maybe as it becomes more routine it will be easier.

I’ve been having a lot of reactions to the idea of going to Second-Closest-City for therapy. When I was calling places looking for a therapist, they’d ask where I coming from and I’d tell them and as soon as they wondered why I’d come so far, I’d start crying. I’d hardly be able to speak.
I feels like it’s some kind of punishment for being so crazy. I’m so messed up I can’t even find a therapist in a city filled with therapists. 3 of my former therapists are within a 5 block radius of my home.
I’m mostly keeping these trips private, people would think it’d strange for me to go to this Second-Closest-City for a couple of hours only. I feel like I’m going on these secret adventures that I can’t tell anyone about.

Some of my professors commute from Second-Closest-City to my city. I have a slight fear that because I am taking such an early train that I might run into them at the train station in Second-Closest-City. I’m not sure how I would explain seeing them there, then seeing them in class later that day. It’s close enough for a commute, but far enough that people don’t usually just stop in for the morning.

There are some upsides though. If I were to be hospitalized, I’d be hospitalized there and my confidentiality would be safer than it could be in any hospitals around here.
I also feel like in this other city, I am suddenly free from a lot of my worries about privacy. I’m in this city where hardly anyone knows me. It’s liberating.

I have some serious doubts that #26 is going to work out. I’ll give it one more appointment to see if things improve, but otherwise I’ll move on. If nothing else I’ve learned that Second-Closest-City is a viable option for finding therapy.

It would have been nice to end on a multiple of 5

I’ve seen more therapists than I have years that I’ve been alive. I started therapy when I was 14.

How am I? Oh well I’m emotionally dysregulated. How are you?

I’ve gone and fired therapist number 25 before I even had a chance to write an entry in here about the start of therapy with him. I met with him for 2 and 1/2 months or so.

Only a handful of sessions in I started to feel really attached to him. It terrified me, because that doesn’t usually happen and was and felt way out of proportion to how little he knew me.

That idealization was crushed shortly after. Because I felt over-attached, I rushed into some tough topics.

I think an important role of a therapist is to keep an eye on the patients level of affect and ensure that it is neither too low or too high. The optimal rage is different for everyone every day. Too low and the therapy is too superficial, but too high and it will be too overwhelming to be therapeutic. The optimal level varies based on how much time remains in the session. As the session nears its end the therapist needs to find the way to bring the affect to a level the patient can manage outside of the container of the therapeutic relationship.

I realize this can often be a difficult task, but he did about as poorly with this as possible. The session ended abruptly, leaving me in a vulnerable emotional state. This left me feeling wary about the therapy, realizing that he and I were very out of sync. I picture this session as a chart where x is time and y is affect. We both started at low affect and his line was straight across with no slope, while mine got higher and higher.

We did talk about this after, but I think he took the wrong message from it. I wanted him to be more aware of when things were escalating too far, while he took this to mean he shouldn’t press certain topics at all.

A couple of weeks ago I wasn’t feeling great. I won’t get into the reasons right now, because retrospectively I’m embarrassed about how trivial they were.
I cut in the bathroom of his building before my appointment. I felt extremely out of control. I bled through my pants leg. I spent the session with my purse held over the blood spot so he wouldn’t see.
Obviously he can’t read my mind (Although once a therapist accused me of wanting him to do that, probably with some justification) but I really resented him for not noticing something. I always keep my purse on the floor rather than holding it. Clearly I wasn’t meeting with Sherlock Holmes for therapy.
He was so focused on convincing me that I shouldn’t feel how I felt, that he didn’t get around to understanding how I felt.
He asked me if I was going to be okay over the weekend and I very unconvincingly said ‘Yes’. He didn’t question it.

That weekend I was not feeling well. I had some oxycodone left over from a medical problem I had over the summer (This is a topic for another post) I took that, some klonopin and some seroquel too.
Unfortunately I only slept for 13 hours as opposed to forever.

This is the first time I’ve ever misused prescription medications like this. I felt incredibly guilty about it. I’ve always only used over the counter medications for overdoses. I feel like doing this is betraying a level of trust between me and the perscribing doctor.

I rationalized this somewhat by not going over the daily limit for the klonopin, and only doing so with the oxycodone, because I care more about the trust between me and my psychiatrist than me and random doctor from the hospital who will never know about this.

With a lot of reluctance, I told therapist number 25 about this, but it took me two sessions to fully get out. At the time when I told him about this I wasn’t feeling suicidal any more. I came early though to that session to plan out my escape routes in case he tried to hospitalize me and I needed to bolt. I tossed a hat and sunglasses and change of clothing in my bag as well.

I brought up the idea during that session that my period may be relevant to some of my more serious mood problems. I’ve brought this up before with therapists. I never really can feel sure. Is it confirmation bias? I don’t have a good way to keep track of if my mood changes around my period. I don’t buy into those mood monthly calendars. All self report measures of mood are highly subjective and because I wouldn’t be blinded to when I have my period I question their validity.

I mentioned feeling conflicted about this due to my identity as a feminist. I don’t really have a fleshed out coherent argument about my feelings with this, just an uncomfortable feeling. Somehow I think that if I say the words feminism and menstruation enough my feelings will be clear to everyone.
The feelings have something to do with the society wanting to view women as overemotional on their periods, the medicalization of a normal process and the validity of PMDD as a diagnosis, but again I’m not good at expressing myself here. I can see both sides of an argument about PMDD.
He seemed confused about why feminism would be relevant to a discussion of PMDD. I can handle disagreement, especially since both sides of the argument are dueling it out in my brain. But I was shocked that he wouldn’t even be aware of the possible relevance of feminism to an issue involving menstruation. He seemed very perplexed and I was horrified.

He did apologize the following session without prompting, but still it was unsettling.

Then to make things even more exciting and wonderful (note the sarcasm) The therapist who kicked me out of school (I need a shorter way to refer to him) was on a major news network promoting his book.
Every bit of publicity feels like he is taunting me.

I sent him 3 angry tweets from my twitter account. This twitter account is public and associated with my real identity (not my real name, but the username I mostly use an also people I know in real like follow me there). Probably not my most brilliant idea ever, but I’m leaving them up. If any person searches for his @replies they will know that at least one person out there is very unhappy with him. They’re vague enough that if a person didn’t know the background they would know I was angry with him, but the reasons would be unclear.
This means he now has access to most of my social networking pages. That’s fine though as I put my best foot forward on those, unlike in this blog.

When I went to therapy to talk about this I was very let down. Awhile ago I made a comment about how klonopin makes me stupid, which it does. The stupidity occurs in varying degrees, but to have any relief from anxiety thoughts rushing around, some of the good smart thoughts are slowed down as well. Sometimes thoughts can even be of both types.
I commented on how I had to stop what I’d been working on (Probably for the better as is it was slightly destructive) when the klonopin kicked in, because I wasn’t able to think well enough. He decided to take this time to argue with me about wither I am on the correct dosage. I have had the dosage fiddled with to the point of adjusting it by increments of 1/4 of the smallest pill size. This is the right dose. I’ve been taking it at this dose for a couple of years. I’m not messing with it. He was convinced that there is some ideal dose where I won’t be anxious or stupid. I don’t believe this is possible, because the two are so intertwined and the impact of the same klonopin dose varies depending on the day.
The comments felt accusatory too. Like he thought I was abusing it, although I have never ever gone over my prescribed limit. In the context of previously telling him about my oxycodone and klonopin adventures I was very sensitive to this sort of comment, because I feel so guilty about it.

He was taking a super ego guilt inducing role. My super ego is super at making me feel guilty already thankyouverymuch.

I told him about something I had thought of doing, but did not do and he took his guilt induction much too far. I can’t write about the details here, but basically he took a thought of mine and turned it into a worst case scenario. I tried to protest, but he kept making it worse and worse. The things he was saying were already fears in my head. I didn’t need him to give them credibility.
I have far worse thoughts in my head that I haven’t told anyone. If he reacts with such a judgmental extreme to something less horrible then there’s no way he can handle the worst of me.

I felt like he was treating me like he thought I was a sociopath. He was playing this role of a conscious for me as if I had none.
If he had even a basic personality conceptualization of me he was working from to base his comments he’d have realized that I am already very skilled at guilt.

I stopped talking. I stared out the window for a bit.
Then, I pulled out my Nintendo DS and resumed the game I’d been playing in the waiting room. Really juvenile, but I don’t care.
My brother called while I was ignoring the therapist. I refused the call, but then he called again and I took it, upping my rudeness level by +10. He just had a quick answer to a question I’d had about the game I was playing.

After about 20 minutes of ignoring the therapist although with the occasional yes or no answer to a question I said “I think I should just leave”. And I did. He asked if I wanted to make another appointment and I said “No”.
There wasn’t anything he could say at the point that could have made me comfortable continuing therapy with him.
I hate myself already, I don’t need a therapist thinking I am awful as well.

I rushed out of the building, worried that I was going to be followed or stopped by security. Psychiatry departments are never placed near an easy exit and I think we all know this is not an accident.

I arrived home and decided to take some ibuprofen. I think the reason I am still alive after all these years is that I am awful at swallowing pills. If I were better at I’d have succeed years ago. I had liquid gel filled capsule type ibuprofen. I decided that if I dumped the liquid out and drank it that might work.
Turns out this is the worst idea ever. I tried opening one up, but it didn’t work well, so I decided to just put it in my mouth and bite it. It was extremely acidic. I ran to the sink to rinse my mouth out to stop the pain. My mouth and throat felt sore after, like I’d been vomiting.
With that method ruined, I gave up to the time being.

It’s a few days later and I’m okayish now. I’m not being very productive with school work. I’ve mostly been sleeping and eating ice cream. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the lack of a therapist situation. I hate starting over again and again.

Adderall and Ritalin

As you can tell from my post about food, I am very particular about what goes into my body.

It was an ordeal for my parents to get me to take any kind of medicine as a child. Any occasion where I took medicine was a rarity. I had no understanding of the cause and effect. The idea that something I ingest would alter how I felt (possibly in a positive way) was hard for me to understand.

My freshman year of high school my parents decided they wanted me to begin taking Adderall. I refused initially. I wasn’t worried about potential risks of the drug. Taking a doctor prescribed drug as directed seemed harmless. I knew cognitively about the idea of side effects, but had no personal experience and therefore was not concerned. My reason for objecting was taste.
I’ve never learned to swallow pills. I have to place them in food. The bitter taste is inescapable.
My parents offered to pay me to take the Adderall. I forget how much. It was a one time payment in exchange for taking the drug indefinitely. I’m not much of negotiator, I probably could have gotten a better deal, but I accepted it.

I began the Adderall.
I have no memory of ever being told by a doctor what side effects to look our for. My parents were told, but I wasn’t.
So when I stopped needing to eat or sleep much I didn’t connect this to the new drug. I just thought I didn’t need these things anymore.

I’d sneak over to the computer at night and play games online. Go to bed at 3 am wake up at 7:30 am? No problem!
I loved my alone time at night. I had free reign of the house, provided I was quiet.
Why would I tell my parents? They’d just get mad at me for sneaking out of bed.

I didn’t need lunch anymore. I’d save my lunch money for various odds and ends.
Couldn’t tell my parents that either, they’d get mad.

Classes were boring. I’d look around the room going pondering the different ways I could kill myself before the class ended. Could I jump out the window? Hang myself with the flagpole? It was half serious and half a game.

I exploded at a friend at school. She asked where my boyfriend and I were going on our date. I accused her of trying to follow us. I never repaired that friendship following this incident.

I started self-injury during this time. Was it something that was bound to happen even without the Adderall? I have no way of knowing.

Based on how long standing my problems have been and my family history I believe I’d still have had difficulties without ever taking Adderall. I think they may have just been accelerated.

During this time I feel something in me broke. I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to fix it, but I never get back to where I was. I have times when I think I am fixed, but a little bump makes me fall apart again.

My fabulous, amazing godfather commented that I looked drugged. And he would know, what with all the time in the 80s he spent being punk rocker, hanging around the east village.

There were a lot of dramatic, loud arguments with my Mom. One resulted in my running into a snow storm in only a t-shirt and jeans. I figured I’d freeze myself to death in the snow. I hid in the backyard, then I got cold, so I decided to live.

I re-entered my home. My dad was on the phone with a local psych unit. Had I stayed outside a few more minutes I’d have been dragged to the hospital.
This was my first threat of psych hospitalization. It began a series of nightmares I had for years about being forcibly hospitalized. (This is a topic for another post)

I wonder sometimes how things might be different had I been hospitalized that day. If some type of intervention had been made earlier would things be less severe today? My parents were and still are for the most part clueless about how bad my problems are. It was a year until I began regular therapy and it wasn’t due to a specific mental health diagnosis except for a little about my ADD. It was primarily for dealing with conflict between my mom and I.

After the snow storm incident, my parents finally realized the Adderall was not the best idea for me and I was taken off it.

Life improved after quitting the Adderall, but never quite to where it was before. The self injury tapered off, to the point where I thought I was done with it forever. There was almost a year where things felt close to normal. A rough patch during my junior year brought everything back. It was much easier to fall apart the second time.

You’d think this would have scared me away from stimulants for good, wouldn’t you?
It did for awhile. It scared me away from all drugs.

Out of desperation, my freshman year of college, I tried some other psych drugs for my anxiety and depression. (This is a topic for another post) This loosened up my fear somewhat. I’m still very distrustful of drugs, but if desperate enough I’m willing to look into the option, occasionally.

When I transfered schools I was terrified about how I would do academically.

During my second hospitalization I asked my doctor if he could prescribe an ADD medication besides Adderall. I thought it would be a good idea to try it while there so if I had a bad reaction I would be in a safe place.
The doctor said no. He had a theory that I was bipolar type 3 (didn’t seem to care that this diagnosis doesn’t exist) and thought it would make me manic.
In art therapy I spaced out while the directions were being explained. I dedicated my piece of colorful scribbles to him and called it “My therapist won’t give me ADD drugs, so I spaced out during the directions”. In typical art therapy fashion the facilitators talked about how even though I’d not heard the directions, my scribbles somehow related to the assigned topic.

During my 3rd hospitalization I asked again. They put me on Ritalin. Was the only helpful thing to come out of that hospitalization. Originally they had me take it every day. I wasn’t comfortable with that.
Now I take Ritalin just on days I want to. I like being able to compare how I feel on the drug versus off it. It has worked out very well.

Everything in my brain organizes itself better. I don’t stare at a blank screen for hours trying to start a paper.

It’s not perfect. I’ve had horrible mood swings when it wears off. I learned this happens when I skip a meal. I make sure to eat (even if I’m not hungry) and things are fine.

Careful self-monitoring is important.

Ritalin is shorter acting than Adderall. I find this helpful. I can’t go for weeks accidentally depriving myself of sleep and food like I did on Adderall.

Part of my Adderall problem was that I wasn’t informed about anything. I was 14. I was young, but old enough that I should have had a more active role in my health decisions. Someone should have let me know that my body still needed food and sleep even if it was saying otherwise.

Psychology Scams

A handful of times I’ve learned of acquaintances falling for psychological diagnostic scams. The most notable are a urine test telling neurotransmitter deficiency and a brain scan to diagnose a mood disorder (Amen Clinic).

I can understand wanting a definitive diagnosis. I know how frustrating it is to go from doctor to doctor with a new diagnosis each time.
When hearing of these two scams, my initial reaction was skepticism and interest. Why had I never heard of them before? Why had no one ever recommended them for me? Quick searches for more information revealed why I’d not heard of these tests.

Neurotransmitter levels in urine do not necessarily reflect the amount of the neurotransmitter in the brain.

We don’t know enough to use brain scans for diagnosis of most psychiatric problems. There are a lot of studies finding differences between the brains of healthy controls and people with a specific problem, but a lot more research needs to be done to use it diagnostically.

Of course there are things that can be diagnosed with brain scans, which makes the Amen Clinic’s service seem legitimate. We can spot brain tumors for one. I even have a friend who had his schizophrenia diagnosis confirmed with an MRI. It’s important to realize that he would have still been diagnosed with schizophrenia regardless of what the the MRI scan showed, it just provided additional evidence for the diagnosis. Also, schizophrenia is a disorder with a larger body of MRI research.

We are no where near being ready to look at a persons brain and tell them they are bipolar.
Unfortunately one of my friends doesn’t realize this and shelled out a lot of money (looks like $3,375.00. according to the website) for this procedure. This clinic also takes a general history. I’m betting that’s where the bipolar diagnosis came from, not the overpriced photos of her brain.

If someone has a lot of money they don’t mind wasting they should go into the two different locations and tell different fake symptoms and then leave with two different diagnoses.

I wonder if the people running these know the science is shoddy? Maybe one person at the top knows and the underlings follow blindly.

If I thought these tests worked I’d get them done in a heartbeat. I want concrete answers. I want to know what is wrong and exactly how to fix it. The guesswork is exasperating. It’s unfortunate that this desire gets taken advantage of.

The people I know who bought into these scams to do not know the tests are bogus. They were given diagnoses and a recommended drug. What do I do? Do I educate them? Or maybe the damage is done and I should leave them be?
They were told in fancy sounding terms what FDA approved drug to take. The treatment plans they were told were nothing dangerous. It’s possible they are getting placebo benefit from this. I’d hate to ruin it if it’s helping them.

But, what if the drug isn’t the right fit? Are they going to feel trapped into taking it when alternatives might be preferable? Or feel hopeless/un-fixable if it doesn’t work?

I also have concern about them advocating the test to others. They share in common this enthusiasm about the test, thinking they’ve uncovered this secret hidden away by the medical community. Should they be told, so others are not dragged into this?

I’ve decided to mind my own business, but I feel a level of guilt over it. As a not-very-close-friend I feel saying more would cross a line.
I wonder how a therapist would/should handle a patient who begins therapy armed with this false information. It’s going to be hard to form a therapeutic alliance by shooting it down at the start. But if the information doesn’t fit with the best treatment plan then something needs to be done.

What do you think? Have you heard of other similar scams?