From C.
When I was about 12, my father announced to family and friends that he had been molesting me my entire life and then tried to kill himself. In college, I was date-raped. In spite all of my struggles, a counselor I saw said I was coping well and after years of work had only mild anxiety as an adult, though certainly I never expected to be “normal,” and so I continued my mental health care.
Later, I married a man who seemed to be the man of my dreams and was so accepting of my turbulent past, but he turned abusive shortly after we were married. Trying to save our relationship, we each saw a counselor, and the counselors together decided that his violence and control problems were escalating and that the best thing for us to do was separate, so together with the counselors, we developed a plan to do so. When I finally announced I was ready to leave, he threatened to kill himself and his daughter if I followed through. In the melée that followed, he lied and told police that I was suicidal and was lying about his threats. The police believed him, arrested me, and put me in a state mental facility for the indigent. There, in 2009, I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and anxiety, with a professional’s note to “rule out Borderline Personality Disorder”; in other words, the possibility of diagnosing me with Borderline Personality Disorder was to be further explored, because I was having suicidal thoughts. Although that diagnosis had not been confirmed, it is a common note on the file of anyone who’s been suicidal, as a precaution. However, the hospital quickly realized that I had been abused, and they only wanted to release me to a domestic violence shelter, as my discharge papers show.
During my time in the hospital, my husband emptied our bank accounts and began divorce proceedings. He then hired outside professionals to evaluate me for Borderline Personality Disorder, when my current doctors did not find me to have the disorder. I already had three doctors I had been working with for years: #1 My counselor for talk therapy with whom I met weekly; #2 our marriage counselor, who has a PhD in Psychology and also is a court and forensic psychologist (this is whom I currently meet with weekly; because of this case and my financial situation, he agreed to take me on a sliding scale); and #3 then a psychiatrist who managed my medication for anxiety.
Those three testified that I did not have Borderline Personality Disorder and verified their existing diagnosis, and all three of these people had seen me for years. In court, the 4th and 5th professionals my ex-husband hired — both forensic psychologists — evaluated me as well. I met with each for no more than three hours and took a number of tests. My own psychologist also did tests and has the same credentials (in some cases, better credentials) as they, and when my psychologist reviewed the tests done by the other psychologists, he reported them in documents to the court to have made severe misuses of the tests. If I could afford a lawyer, this documentation could easily force the revocation of the professionals’ licenses to practice (if in any court other than family court, because in family court, doctors are immune from malpractice suits). But these disagreements among professionals reflect the way that, in the absence of a strong scientific basis for a diagnostic category, subjectivity and bias easily come into play.
Unfortunately, my ex had taken all of our resources, and no help was coming, so as soon as the family court judge in our case heard the "objective, outside" reports from the two, three-hour evaluations by the professionals my husband had hired (#4 & #5), these overrode the many years of treatment and diagnosis by the doctors I had seen on an ongoing basis (#1, #2 & #3), who did testify several times in that court. The judge turned over full custody of our son, who up until 15 months old when we split had been with me safely and happily 24/7 without threat or concern, even as verified by my ex in court.
I lost everything — my home, my belongings (those I owned both before and during the marriage), I have no money, I was not awarded a pillow or a blanket. I was awarded an empty bank account. I was terrorized in my marriage, held captive as a prisoner, and in many ways I still am. I was so scared for my own safety, for my very life, that at times it became completely overwhelming. My ex-husband is incredibly wealthy, extremely powerful and controlling, and clearly a master liar; of our massive estate, the judge let me use 10k over our several-year divorce, while my ex boasts of spending well over “six figures.”
I am sometimes scared to go on the internet or to make phone calls. He has access to my very medical records, my journals, he even used my unfinished, unsent letters and emails from my computer in court, yet the judge looked at me like I was crazy when I dared ask how my ex might have gotten hold of these things. My ex even testified and presented the letters as unsent and unfinished himself, then accused me of stealing the computer those things were on, making it impossible, either way, for him to have access to unfinished and unsent materials. If I could figure out any way he could do those things legitimately, then I’d have no fear; however, there is no reasonable way for him to have had access.
Worst of all, I have to live day to day knowing my son is with a man who hurt both of us and has threatened to kill his own child. My doctors have diagnosed me as traumatized. My baby is with a violent man who threatened to kill his daughter, and I am financially, emotionally, and physically devastated. I have physical problems, because I cannot afford health insurance, after paying the court-ordered child support (to a millionaire) and cannot always afford my medications. I have severe migraines, and I have a football-sized mass in my abdomen. I cannot afford to have it diagnosed, let alone treated (I had surgery to remove a large, painful tumor in my abdomen in 2005, and this is probably similar). I suffer with severe chronic pain that could easily be treated, nausea, and headaches, all of which make it hard to work, which makes it harder to afford healthcare (hence the inconsistency in my medications, which I need to be able to work!!!). It is a difficult cycle to get stuck in, and one that truly may make me severely mentally ill.
Since all of this, I have learned that Borderline Personality Disorder is one of the absolutely worst labels you can give someone in a child custody dispute. The stigma is through the roof, and judges and doctors alike shun and discriminate, because Borderline patients are considered untreatable and/or just plain unpleasant. My doctors actually testified that there is not even a slight chance that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, in part because I actually go to therapy, and I am consistent and honest and committed to good health. But, in a family court setting, with third-party evaluations, the stigma is so disproportionate that I got no fair chance.
Borderline Personality Disorder is judgmentally associated with “false” suicide attempts, which are made allegedly just to get attention; it is a diagnosis often used improperly and accusatorily against women as lying to try to gain custody; and it is also a little more accurately associated with cutting and self-harm, supposedly for equally manipulative reasons. All of these associations are also easily tagged onto women who were abused as children. It is a severe personality disorder that, if used at all in court, immediately activates biases that are clearly incredibly difficult to overcome. And, of course, I hope it goes without saying that even if I did have this disorder, parental assistance would be more appropriate than being treated as a criminal and being denied rights to privacy, property or help.
Once my ex damaged my credibility with family court accusations of Borderline Personality Disorder, nothing I said was considered true, and anything I say just feeds into supporting the diagnosis, so my ex can say anything he wants about me, and if I deny it, then I am "delusional." Because of the diagnosis, no one will even bother to find out if what I say is true. My ex started all this, saying, despite not being a doctor, that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, he misused the term “rule out,” lying over and over again in court that the rule-out from the mental hospital meant I was diagnosed. He said that I am lying, and the doctors he hired chose to believe him rather than do accurate evaluations or read the reports.
If someone looked at my case, they'd see the following (1) anything bad I said about myself was classified as true and verified by my ex and accepted by the courts, (2) anything bad I said about my ex was described as delusional. I went so far to try and prove my honesty that I took a lie detector test and passed it after hours of questions and unsuccessful attempts to catch me lying, but my ex convinced the judge that I was so delusional that I was able to trick a lie detector test. The tester testified that if that were true, my results would not have shown normal truthfulness or untruthfulness, that instead they would have shown inconsistency or would have been impossible to evaluate. Believe it or not, I have proof my ex took a lie detector test too and that his results showed "unreadable"; however, he lied and told the judge that he couldn't remember the name of the testing site, so he couldn't provide the results. I have emails from him and his attorney with the real information. But because he injected the Borderline Personality label, the bias ran so deep that no matter how much actual, documented, incontestable proof I had, he was consistently able to get the judge to not even hear or look at my evidence. And now I am struggling to avoid homelessness and my son is without his mom.
If Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder were not so seriously lacking in solid scientific underpinnings, and if there had been clear warnings in the diagnostic manual about the importance of not assigning these labels when there are other obvious explanations for the patient’s behavior or moods that might be among the criteria, I would not have been given these labels and would not have suffered the significant harm that has come to me as a result of being psychiatrically diagnosed. In fact, none of the losses described below would have happened if Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar Disorder did not carry the weight of supposedly being scientifically-grounded, serious mental illnesses. What exactly is the scientific definition of “serious mental illness?”
Economic losses incurred:
- my home
- my belongings
- all of my savings
- my health insurance
- difficulty getting a job
Noneconomic losses incurred:
- custody of my child
- my sense of reality when, after being a victim of violence and learning the horrible news that my husband was not wonderful but dangerous, instead of being told I was understandably devastated, I was instead diagnosed with a mental illness called Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
- my privacy
- my credibility
- my health because of losing my health insurance
Later, I married a man who seemed to be the man of my dreams and was so accepting of my turbulent past, but he turned abusive shortly after we were married. Trying to save our relationship, we each saw a counselor, and the counselors together decided that his violence and control problems were escalating and that the best thing for us to do was separate, so together with the counselors, we developed a plan to do so. When I finally announced I was ready to leave, he threatened to kill himself and his daughter if I followed through. In the melée that followed, he lied and told police that I was suicidal and was lying about his threats. The police believed him, arrested me, and put me in a state mental facility for the indigent. There, in 2009, I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and anxiety, with a professional’s note to “rule out Borderline Personality Disorder”; in other words, the possibility of diagnosing me with Borderline Personality Disorder was to be further explored, because I was having suicidal thoughts. Although that diagnosis had not been confirmed, it is a common note on the file of anyone who’s been suicidal, as a precaution. However, the hospital quickly realized that I had been abused, and they only wanted to release me to a domestic violence shelter, as my discharge papers show.
During my time in the hospital, my husband emptied our bank accounts and began divorce proceedings. He then hired outside professionals to evaluate me for Borderline Personality Disorder, when my current doctors did not find me to have the disorder. I already had three doctors I had been working with for years: #1 My counselor for talk therapy with whom I met weekly; #2 our marriage counselor, who has a PhD in Psychology and also is a court and forensic psychologist (this is whom I currently meet with weekly; because of this case and my financial situation, he agreed to take me on a sliding scale); and #3 then a psychiatrist who managed my medication for anxiety.
Those three testified that I did not have Borderline Personality Disorder and verified their existing diagnosis, and all three of these people had seen me for years. In court, the 4th and 5th professionals my ex-husband hired — both forensic psychologists — evaluated me as well. I met with each for no more than three hours and took a number of tests. My own psychologist also did tests and has the same credentials (in some cases, better credentials) as they, and when my psychologist reviewed the tests done by the other psychologists, he reported them in documents to the court to have made severe misuses of the tests. If I could afford a lawyer, this documentation could easily force the revocation of the professionals’ licenses to practice (if in any court other than family court, because in family court, doctors are immune from malpractice suits). But these disagreements among professionals reflect the way that, in the absence of a strong scientific basis for a diagnostic category, subjectivity and bias easily come into play.
Unfortunately, my ex had taken all of our resources, and no help was coming, so as soon as the family court judge in our case heard the "objective, outside" reports from the two, three-hour evaluations by the professionals my husband had hired (#4 & #5), these overrode the many years of treatment and diagnosis by the doctors I had seen on an ongoing basis (#1, #2 & #3), who did testify several times in that court. The judge turned over full custody of our son, who up until 15 months old when we split had been with me safely and happily 24/7 without threat or concern, even as verified by my ex in court.
I lost everything — my home, my belongings (those I owned both before and during the marriage), I have no money, I was not awarded a pillow or a blanket. I was awarded an empty bank account. I was terrorized in my marriage, held captive as a prisoner, and in many ways I still am. I was so scared for my own safety, for my very life, that at times it became completely overwhelming. My ex-husband is incredibly wealthy, extremely powerful and controlling, and clearly a master liar; of our massive estate, the judge let me use 10k over our several-year divorce, while my ex boasts of spending well over “six figures.”
I am sometimes scared to go on the internet or to make phone calls. He has access to my very medical records, my journals, he even used my unfinished, unsent letters and emails from my computer in court, yet the judge looked at me like I was crazy when I dared ask how my ex might have gotten hold of these things. My ex even testified and presented the letters as unsent and unfinished himself, then accused me of stealing the computer those things were on, making it impossible, either way, for him to have access to unfinished and unsent materials. If I could figure out any way he could do those things legitimately, then I’d have no fear; however, there is no reasonable way for him to have had access.
Worst of all, I have to live day to day knowing my son is with a man who hurt both of us and has threatened to kill his own child. My doctors have diagnosed me as traumatized. My baby is with a violent man who threatened to kill his daughter, and I am financially, emotionally, and physically devastated. I have physical problems, because I cannot afford health insurance, after paying the court-ordered child support (to a millionaire) and cannot always afford my medications. I have severe migraines, and I have a football-sized mass in my abdomen. I cannot afford to have it diagnosed, let alone treated (I had surgery to remove a large, painful tumor in my abdomen in 2005, and this is probably similar). I suffer with severe chronic pain that could easily be treated, nausea, and headaches, all of which make it hard to work, which makes it harder to afford healthcare (hence the inconsistency in my medications, which I need to be able to work!!!). It is a difficult cycle to get stuck in, and one that truly may make me severely mentally ill.
Since all of this, I have learned that Borderline Personality Disorder is one of the absolutely worst labels you can give someone in a child custody dispute. The stigma is through the roof, and judges and doctors alike shun and discriminate, because Borderline patients are considered untreatable and/or just plain unpleasant. My doctors actually testified that there is not even a slight chance that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, in part because I actually go to therapy, and I am consistent and honest and committed to good health. But, in a family court setting, with third-party evaluations, the stigma is so disproportionate that I got no fair chance.
Borderline Personality Disorder is judgmentally associated with “false” suicide attempts, which are made allegedly just to get attention; it is a diagnosis often used improperly and accusatorily against women as lying to try to gain custody; and it is also a little more accurately associated with cutting and self-harm, supposedly for equally manipulative reasons. All of these associations are also easily tagged onto women who were abused as children. It is a severe personality disorder that, if used at all in court, immediately activates biases that are clearly incredibly difficult to overcome. And, of course, I hope it goes without saying that even if I did have this disorder, parental assistance would be more appropriate than being treated as a criminal and being denied rights to privacy, property or help.
Once my ex damaged my credibility with family court accusations of Borderline Personality Disorder, nothing I said was considered true, and anything I say just feeds into supporting the diagnosis, so my ex can say anything he wants about me, and if I deny it, then I am "delusional." Because of the diagnosis, no one will even bother to find out if what I say is true. My ex started all this, saying, despite not being a doctor, that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, he misused the term “rule out,” lying over and over again in court that the rule-out from the mental hospital meant I was diagnosed. He said that I am lying, and the doctors he hired chose to believe him rather than do accurate evaluations or read the reports.
If someone looked at my case, they'd see the following (1) anything bad I said about myself was classified as true and verified by my ex and accepted by the courts, (2) anything bad I said about my ex was described as delusional. I went so far to try and prove my honesty that I took a lie detector test and passed it after hours of questions and unsuccessful attempts to catch me lying, but my ex convinced the judge that I was so delusional that I was able to trick a lie detector test. The tester testified that if that were true, my results would not have shown normal truthfulness or untruthfulness, that instead they would have shown inconsistency or would have been impossible to evaluate. Believe it or not, I have proof my ex took a lie detector test too and that his results showed "unreadable"; however, he lied and told the judge that he couldn't remember the name of the testing site, so he couldn't provide the results. I have emails from him and his attorney with the real information. But because he injected the Borderline Personality label, the bias ran so deep that no matter how much actual, documented, incontestable proof I had, he was consistently able to get the judge to not even hear or look at my evidence. And now I am struggling to avoid homelessness and my son is without his mom.
If Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder were not so seriously lacking in solid scientific underpinnings, and if there had been clear warnings in the diagnostic manual about the importance of not assigning these labels when there are other obvious explanations for the patient’s behavior or moods that might be among the criteria, I would not have been given these labels and would not have suffered the significant harm that has come to me as a result of being psychiatrically diagnosed. In fact, none of the losses described below would have happened if Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar Disorder did not carry the weight of supposedly being scientifically-grounded, serious mental illnesses. What exactly is the scientific definition of “serious mental illness?”
Economic losses incurred:
- my home
- my belongings
- all of my savings
- my health insurance
- difficulty getting a job
Noneconomic losses incurred:
- custody of my child
- my sense of reality when, after being a victim of violence and learning the horrible news that my husband was not wonderful but dangerous, instead of being told I was understandably devastated, I was instead diagnosed with a mental illness called Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
- my privacy
- my credibility
- my health because of losing my health insurance