Mental health system?
 

(Hopefully I got the right section this time.)

So, does anyone here have any experience with mental health professionals and their reactions to gothic culture? I have a few stories to tell - had one try to get me into treatment for my "delusions" that were causing me to "dress in strange clothing."

Bwaaaaaah?

Myself, no. I don't think I recall a single comment on it.

Nah, I was a metal head in my early teen years when I was seeing counselors and psychologists. I guess it was normal enough that they didn't question that type of thing in the early 90s. I actually had my worst depressive episodes before I was a Goth so there wasn't any of that 'witchcraft' or 'devil worshiping' for the doctors to ask me about.

I would suggest that if your doctor is saying things about 'delusions making you dress in strange clothing' that it sounds like they have a biased opinion. I don't think that therapy works when there is a biased party involved.

I've known people who have problems understanding Goths. In fact, I think it is a conspiracy; wherein, people judging other people's behavior have decided their style is the only thing that counts. They just don't understand or relate to Goth Culture at all and manage to develope negative opinions. I don't even like a lot of the elite deciding what a "perfect" human being should be. The premise is a total lack of sensitivity. I don't know how they got their jobs.

I don't think goth can be considered a legitimate culture. More like a consumerist culture side effect. It's about as cultural as a fanbase for a sports team.

Unfortunately that one was a school administrator rather than a doctor I'd picked out. He's the person I had to go through to get any sort of consideration, time off, extensions, etc., because of the issues at the time. He's also a source of a surprising number of them. Then again, my luck with therapists seems rather poor.

Whether or not you want to call it a culture doesn't much matter. I personally find it disturbing that an activity taken up on my own time that doesn't harm anyone is such a Big Deal to the point where it interferes with getting legitimate issues addressed.

I only ever saw counselors and therapists when I was younger, before you would have classified me as goth, so I don't really have any personal stories.
But I have had a few friends who had therapy and such whilst going through their 'goth phases', and I don't ever recall them saying anything about them mentioning their appearance in relevance to their mental states.

I've been to loads of therapists, clinical social workers, psychologists, and a (I believe it was just the one) psychiatrist, none of them ever said anything about it other than the one psychologist that wanted to know listen to some of my music and she ended up really liking it, which reminds me that I haven't seen D in a really long time and I miss her.

I've never had an issue with the mental health service in regards to how I dress(ed) or what I listen to. All my issues with the service are far more serious and relate to poor service providers, awful workers (of different types), general douchebaggery and being treated wrongly and for the wrong thing.

Like what's been said before, general dickbaggery, but nothing based on my appearance. Though we can make this thread about general therapy dickbaggery. In which case I have story.

Oooo story time!

No, wait, I LIED. A psychiatrist once told me that the music I listened to was what was making me depressed. This was long before I discovered goth though, back when I was very very into dance music. In general though, lets make this about general therapy douchebaggery, I have loads of stories for that.

I wanna hear these stories!

I was constantly taken to numerous psychologists and psychiatrist as a child. Not because of any real mental issues, mind you. My parents are overall awesome, but the one thing I can't forgive about my upbringing is I was one of the ritalin kids, forced to take a medicine because if I was hard to handle, it MUST be because I had ADD, not because kids are naturally hyperactive and defiant.
One of the psychiatrists I genuinely loved, but I still remember with hatred the last psychiatrist my parents took me to see. It was in high school and we were talking about 'why I'm such a rebel at school' as all grownups claimed, my parents, my teachers, and the psychiatrist who was already biased against me from the beginning of every session. I explained the psychiatrist that I wasn't a rebel, that just by the very fact that I was an atheist it was obvious anything I'd do would be seen as rebellious to a christian high school.
The psychiatrist started preaching to me about how every time I deny god I let demons into my body.
As soon as my father picked me up I told him the story, told him he would never take me to that psychiatrist again or any other for that matter.

My last psychiatrist ran off to New Zealand apparently. God, I hated him so fucking much. He tried to talk to me like I was an idiot and I should be grateful for his time.He told me, to my face, that he didn't consider my two very real diagnoses as real problems and I should stop wasting his time so he could get back to helping people with real needs :|

EDIT : It should be noted that HE was the one who diagnosed me.

God the more I hear about other people's experiences with mental health professionals the more thankful I am for mine. I only ever had on bad therapist and that was more because she didn't really know how to handle what was going on (as she mainly dealt with grief, and that was what I was seeing her for but she didn't really know what to do with grief plus pre-existing emotional disorders) and her only big fault was that she didn't immediately refer me to someone more qualified, though after about a month she did. All of the other various people that I saw were wonderful, at least as far as I can remember, there was one when I was really young that I only saw for a bit who I don't remember anything about.

Yeah, the only problem I had was when I was a teen everything went back to my parent's divorce.

Oh, and once a teacher/principal thought I must be depressed or autistic because I was too quiet. He called mom into his office and asked what was wrong with me. On the plus side I got away with skipping off homework after that, since she just got offended and left in a huff.

I learned what homosexuality was from one of my therapists. After I was ***** (I angsted about it in the whining thread), the first therapist I saw was two years later, and she was the first person I opened up to about what happened to me, and she was the last one for a long time. Why? Because when I told her about it, she thought I was lying. See, she didn't believe men could get *****, and that I was trying to hide that the bully and I were experimenting. She thought I was a closet homosexual and she was always trying to talk me into going to this "Pray The Gay Away" camp. I was so glad she never told my parents about the discussions we had, because she stuck to the "everything in here is confidential" policy militantly.

A bit of non-relevant story here: After that I felt guilty and dirty and horrible for years. She seriously really fucked with my head. What's interesting is that feminism saved me. Around the beginning of 11th grade I made quite a few feminist friends and read some of the literature, and learning about how "no one ever asks to be *****" and "men can be victims too" empowered me, and I've only recently started to come to terms with what all happened.

Is there a moral? Bad therapists can really fuck you?

Jesus Christ. Between you and Alan I can't believe they let people like that become psychologists. I mean really, NOWHERE in her training was there a mention of male victims?

Although the history of how psychology treated rrape is pretty fucked up, ever read Rrape: Sex, Violence, History by Joanna Bourke? Its a historical look on how society, including the medical community, viewed sexual assault and treated rapists. It was really fucked up, was she old?

She was actually pretty young, she had just gotten her license or whatever. I don't know about Alan, but my hometown was teeny tiny and being old fashioned was more socially acceptable and common then most other places I've found myself in.

She meant well, and she was a sweet girl. I just hope she's wised up by now.

Yeah, but psychology is supposed to be a legit science, you know? Homosexuality was taken out of the DSM in the seventies! A medical doctor is supposed to have a standard, or else he's labeled a quack and ostracized from the medical community. They're allowed to be conservative or religious or whatever, but they're supposed to know better than to take up faith healing, and they know to put their own ethics aside and do whats best for the patient, and that includes taking something like that seriously. And not reverting back to quackery.

Yeah, but some of them really are quacks, and as long as there are people who take their own biases more seriously then what they learn in college, it's always going to be that way.

Of course, a certain percentage of medical doctors are quacks or are actually abusive of patients, so it's not like there's some standard in place that makes them more predictably reliable than any particular psychiatrist.

Oh yeah, the one I had the most problems with was an ass all around really. The worst part? I finally told him what had been the actual problem - I'd been in an abusive relationship with another student for about a year and a half, and I honestly just couldn't hold it together afterward. He just didn't react. I mean, seriously, not even an acknowledgment that I'd said something important. He went right on talking about whatever issues he'd dreamt up that I had, as if I'd made some irrelevant comment about the weather.

Don't get me wrong, I've had some brilliant therapists as well as some awful ones. The real stand out one was one I had called Mike. He was brilliant in every way. Took me seriously, didn't talk down to me, really had time for me (even outside his normal office hours if I really needed him) but unfortunately, I got too old for the services he provided (he worked with teenagers, and as always happens, I became an adult).

I do recall one though, she refused to work with me again after one session because I threw A SINGLE BLOCK OF LEGO at the wall, which was some ten feet away from her. A single lego block and she labelled me as violently uncooperative and that I was impossible to work with.