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In reply to the discussion: Asperger's dropped from revised diagnosis manual [View all]slackmaster
(60,567 posts)...attempt to do so anyway.
Here's an example distilled down for easy consumption:
I lost a long-term friend to suicide last year. Several weeks before she finally killed herself, I intervened and stopped a suicide attempt by calling 911. The police and a psych nurse took her away to the county psychiatric hospital. It took her almost 10 days to talk her way out, using the brute force of her considerable intellect to figure out the right things to say.
Seven weeks later she took several boxes of things to her father's room in a nursing home, then walked out to the parking lot and shot herself.
Her brother and I cleaned up the mess of her belongings. He handled the financials. I was left with a full SUV load of mostly paperwork that she had accumulated over about 30 years, including all of her medical records.
As I sifted through the boxes of mostly chaff, I discovered that on three occasions over the last 20 years of her life she had been "diagnosed" and prescribed medication, but no psychotherapy, for depression, an eating disorder, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. She had also sought help to quit smoking on several occasions. All of those attempts to improve her life failed, because she didn't follow through and never sought competent treatment. She did get some counseling, but not what she really needed.
Here's the kicker - While she was in the psych lockup she was diagnosed (by a psychiatrist) with Borderline Personality Disorder. I have a degree in psych, and based on her behavior late in life plus things I discovered in her stuff, that was probably a correct diagnosis. But it was too late. She was too far gone, had given up, and didn't follow through on her treatment.
About 20 years during which there was hope for recovery was wasted because she never got to a competent mental health professional.