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Survivor Testimonies I have called this page "Survivor Testimonies".  Unfortunately not all the people mentioned on this page are still with us.  Many survivors feel "invisible" and voiceless.... If you are a survivor and would like to have your experiences (of the services that were supposed to help you) published here then contact me at traumablogger@hotmail.com Coping with the mental health sevice can be an incredibly damaging experience.  Yet many people feel forced to 'bite their tongue' and supress very legitimate and appropriate anger about the treatment they have received.  Many fear they would be penalised in their notes as diplaying "aggression" or "incompliance".  This is in itself very invalidating and further entrenches the burying of healthy emotional responses.  This 'silencing' through stigma means full mental health professional acountability is very hard to achieve.    Kathy - My experience of being diagnosed BPD   Tabi Can you imagine not daring to go out on your own for over 3 years in case while you are out you change into somebody else and don’t know where you are or how you got there? Can you imagine, while you are at home on your own having daily seizures and periods of blindness?Can you imagine being in constant pain, in yourjoints and from a multitude of “sores” that cover your body and being so weak that you can hardly walk any distance? I thought not and neither can I, but that’s how Tabi, (Jane, Ickle, Mute and the Others), have lived their life for the past 3 years. You would think that for the medical profession would be bending over backwards to discoverwhat is wrong with this intelligent young woman who should be in the prime of her life, that the medical profession would be giving her the best treatment that is available to help her, yet despite the recommendations of more than one eminent specialist health care professional that she needs specialist expert treatment for the Dissociative Identity Disorder that she suffers from, (a diagnosis that is increasingly being recognized as a manifestation of extreme trauma, PTSD II), St George & Tolworth MHT are point blank refusing to finance the specialist treatment that she requires,with all they are offering her is weekly meetings with her CPN, medications and a return to a psychiatric unit where in the past she suffered the extreme trauma of a serious sexual assault with that trauma seriously contributing to her condition, a situation that beggars belief. Tabi is a member and moderator of Kate’s Place, an online mental health peer support group that has for the past 2 years has been fighting alongside Tabi in an attempt to get her the treatment that she not only needs, but deserves, re-admittance to The Retreat Hospital in York, the place where she was first diag nosed by a leading specialist as suffering from extreme trauma, (PTSD II), yet despite enlisting Edward Davey, her localMP’s help almost a year ago she is not only any nearer getting the help that she requires, but has deteriorated considerably and as well as her previously mentioned difficulties is left living under a constant cloud of depression and suicidal thoughts. If somebody were to leave a dog living as Tabi is they would end up in court charged with cruelty, how do St George and Tolworth MHT get away with it? Sadly, it is not uncommon for the victims of complex extreme trauma to be treated as Tabi is with X’s excellent web site, www.traumatised.org, with the tag line, Not Insane - Nor to Blame, containing some terrific essays and articles that would assist any reader to not only understand the subject of Complex Post Traumatic Stress, (PTSD II), but Tabi’s situation,something that is happening to so many others too.  Where does Tabi and her gang go from here?  This piece was written by Phil from Kates Place The Anna Institute :   How therapy can mirror abuse It is no wonder therapy for the so called "treatment resistent"  fails when many therapists / pyschiatrists do not realise how thier actions mirror the orginal abuse.  If adeqaute training were given I strongly believe invalidating and distressing experiences with the mental health service could be avoided, and patients could flourish. http://www.theannainstitute.org/ Alice   Exaggerating?  Being raped and beaten does tend to make a person "hystrionic"! "Contemptuous of local services" Is that now a symptom of an illness? Or a rational healthy response? Mike  (usa) -Musical Response "just get over it" John  (uk)- The World of Silence and the Silence you Shame CMHT         Questionable Anger? Rachels H (uk)   Poetry      Kate Logan's tragic Story  http://www.justice4kate.holmfirthdesignweb.com/   The Fran Lyon Case Pyschiatry that blames the victim