There are so many (unconvincing for misdiagnosed persons) reasons why it should not exist.
- You should forget about it and move on with your life.
- If you say “misdiagnosed” someone might assume you’re asking for seconds, for another (more severe?) diagnosis
- The path of healing and recovery is about forgiveness. By claiming to have been misdiagnosed, it’s almost as if you haven’t chosen to forgive your doctors, or our mental health system, or the system of capitalism from which it arises
- It is four whole syllables long, what a mouthful!
- It reminds people of mental patients who shout: “I was MISDIAGNOSED” as if their lives and needs for integrity almost depended on someone accepting this
- It’s a threat to the ordered (and apparently rather fragile) world of Capital Psychiatry and the (B?)DSM, and the powers that be shall not have it!
- If you say “misdiagnosed” an evil leprechaun in a grey pinstripe suit will come and, gosh, we just… we just can’t have it!
But then we are inevitably confronted with unchanging fact that leprechauns do not exist except in fables and stories, but the experiences and facts of your misdiagnosis did and do. It exists! So to have a word for it, a word besides “it” or “the bad thing that happened to me or with me or whatever” or “my past” or “my struggle” or “yeah that fucking nightmare huh”, to contain it in a single descriptive if not perfect word has immense value.
No one goes around wanting to be misdiagnosed. And yet, severe and traumatic experiences of misdiagnosis do happen to a certain group of people. These people deserve an identity.
Much ink has been spilled reclaiming various terms such as madness, and this extends to mad activism and mad pride. While reclaiming terms of hate have functioned well for identity politics in the area of sexual difference, the area mental health and mental difference operates with different dynamics. It isn’t necessarily wrong for a misdiagnosed person to attempt to reclaim madness, but it feels to us a spiritually onerous burden to suggest that they must retain deep anger at the system that misdiagnosis along with a stance of activism to merely be regarded as having an identity. When the system purveys the idea that misdiagnosed persons must be “one of the good mentally ill people” to then earn a facsimile of respect, demanding they must also be “one of the good mad activists” to be seen as truly intelligent, truly liberal, or truly engaged with reality only heightens the impossibility of their situation
“Psychiatric survivor” and “ex-patient” are also words that are used to mean something roughly similar, and already exist as acceptable identities in certain circles — though none with active or regular peer support meetings as far as we can tell. “Psychiatric survivor” is seven syllables, three more than misdiagnosed. We have no beef with anyone who identifies as a psychiatric survivor. We also have not yet witnessed any sustaining efforts for there to be support groups for such individuals — though for all we know they could be on an island somewhere. Comparatively, “misdiagnosed” and “misdiagnosed person” suggest not that psychiatry is evil or that psychiatrists are evil (extreme or idiosyncratic views) but that a mistake was made. Can the world not allow that mistakes are occasionally made in a particular field of study? “Survivor” also implies that no talking or sitting should be in order, only escape. Contrastingly, with “Misdiagnosed” as an identity, we focus on our own lived experience, and leave room for analysis and careful thought, that those of us who feel called to engage as patients in therapy as we see fit.
In reality, my identity as a misdiagnosed person does not pose any threat to psychiatry and neither would yours, should you choose to adopt one. In reality, honest feedback is a kind of support, even if harsh. The worst that could happen to psychiatry might be: we cause greater attention to mistakes that have been made and are made and better processes for more collaborative and accurate diagnosis processes. This is not to say we ignore power imbalances or are interested in vain compromise. Good intentions are not enough for change, commitment and strength are also needed. The misdiagnosed founders of NAMI may have started with good intentions, but in their compliance with Diagnosis Theory, it was perhaps inevitable that they accepted pharmaceutical dollars, a corrupting influence and capitulation to the biochemical model that renders their claims of activism vacuous and their culture toxic. Mad activists calling for revolution are not necessarily foolish in their calls.
We as allied misdiagnosed persons hope to cause a revolution in the sense of how psychiatry looks at the biochemical model of mental illness that has been prevalent if not wildly addictive for the past forty years since at least Osheroff V Chestnut. Once more accurate information comes to light, psychiatry and psychiatrists may choose of their volition, in the language of step four, of The Twelve Steps “make a searching and fearless moral inventory” of themselves. We concede ahead of time that this might seem preposterous to psychiatry’s more committed detractors. But it is our belief that anyone can let go of the harmful pattern of misdiagnosing others and themselves.
I am a misdiagnosed person is a way of saying:
- Facts and information and learning (including even book learning sometimes!) are important to me, as is useful feedback
- I have faith that the people who matter to me will understand that I am not insane (and maybe even never have been, though indeed, that is an insanely high bar )
- I am an honest person but struggled in the past with the concept of healthy denial
- I deserve to exist as a person in this world, despite all of my relational and psychological trauma from my experiences of misdiagnosis telling me I do not
- I do not necessarily agree with our mental health system of diagnosis, as they may (in the language of Nonviolent Communication on diagnosing others ) ultimately do more harm than good by creating conditions for tragic self-fulfilling prophecy
Misdiagnosed Anonymous 