Families are complicated.

I don't know, it's hard blaming you at this point.
I mean, I would understand that they thought you lazy when you dropped out, that they pushed you when you started rejecting leaving home.
But this situation has been going on for long, and you even have a medical diagnosis, so I'm not sure I understand what they expect you to do...

If it makes you feel better, then it's good.
Medicines are often hard to balance.



I have this one student who is diagnosed with depression.
He did not want to be medicated for his depression but he ended up in ER and the doctor told him that he either took his medicine or he should be hospitalized - so he accepted.

I think there is something more because he also has violent outbursts and is a pathological liar. So it's not just the depression.
And his family never admited to anything else (their poor depressed kid, and everything else is other people's fault) but now that his meds are working they started to realize that his attitude was not related to his depression.

Mental illness are so complicated, and still so little is known about them.

There is this other student, we think she might be schizophrenic.
She's been diagnosed several things through her young life: first ADHD, then anxiety, then TEA, then depression.
She currently can't come to the school, she feels so anxious about literally anything and everything.
But she has had suicidal thoughts, and she mentioned that some voices in her head were the ones telling her to jump out of the window and stuff like that, so maybe - just maybe - that's the key to her issues and simply they could not detect it yet.

I don't know, it's terrible, we are seeing so many teenagers with mental issues lately, it's just not normal anymore.

Agreed.

But that said, we are often overmedicated.
I mean, you have an issue which need medication then you must take it - be it a heart issue, severe pain or a mental issue. That's what medication is for and it's been tested and it's known to be better than not taking it (even if it has some downsides).

But some doctors just make a diagnosis and prescribe a medicine without being sure of what the condition is.
Because, of course, a prescription is much easier (and cheaper!) than making more tests to confirm what the condition is.

I haven't suffered it myself, but I've seen plenty of kids who have had a train full of WRONG diagnosis over the years!
Oh, she is likely to be ADHD, let's medicate her!
Aww, no, after four years it's become aparent that it was not ADHD, what is it then? Looks like depression, let's medicate her!
And so on.

In my opinion that's not good medical practice

Mental health in general is a gong show. So many people get wrongly diagnosed, and stay that way for years. It's hard because when you're in that mental state, sometimes you don't realize that certain things aren't "normal", so you don't think to tell the doctor about them. That and I think doctors will jump to the simplest explanation immediately without properly looking into things, like Amura's saying.

I spent years diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and it turned out to actually be Dissociative Identity Disorder ಠ_ಠ Just a liiiiiittle bit of a gap there. But no one spends time asking the right questions to catch these things, they just throw you on an anti-depressant and call it a day.

...Or even when they catch it they sometimes still just do that.

I went through the government mental health system where I lived and was able to see a psychiatrist, and it went something like this:

Doctor: You have DID.

Me: How should I proceed? Can I access further services through [Government System]?

Doctor: *starts laughing* No. Take this anti-depressant and go hire a private psychiatrist.

Exactly!
What happened to you is exactly what I've noticed with my students.

Just get a diagnosis - any diagnosis will do, because what we want to do is prescribing a medication and be done with it.
No more tests, no follow up, no nothing.