Christopher Palmer, PhD, tells the story of a woman who spent 20 years in a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis that no one thought to challenge . . .
. . . until someone finally asked a question no one else had considered.
It’s a difficult story, but an important one for anyone who works with clients who aren’t responding to established treatment protocols.
Take a look: It’s about 4 minutes.
Notice how carefully Christopher shares this story.
He’s encouraging us to stay curious when something isn’t adding up, especially for clients who’ve been given a diagnosis and told that’s the end of the conversation.
Now I’d like to hear from you: what would it look like to bring that kind of curiosity into your work?
Please leave a comment and let me know. And thanks for watching.
Catherine Lucas, Psychotherapy, Las Crucea, NM, USA says
But how was she after her waking up? Could she go back to a “normal” life? How was her speech? Was she able to walk again? Quality of life surely comes to mind.
Sara Trembath, Counseling, Streetsboro, OH, USA says
This kind of thing happens more often than we think. I get frustrated when I see that someone has a label of say treatment resistant depression, or bipolar disorder or BPD or schizophrenia that isn’t responding to treatment and instead of checking to see whether the diagnosis is correct, they continue to give more and more meds that don’t work. As a therapist who works with complex trauma and dissociative disorders, I see this type of scenario fairly often, though not to the extreme described in the video. It is one of the primary reasons that I chose to specialize in the that area. I knew of a situation where a client had spent 14 years diagnosed with all of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, bipolar disorder, borderline and recurrent, severe major depression. It turned out they had DID and once they finally found someone who recognized it and could provide appropriate treatment, they fully recovered. It took a while because a lot of damage had been done by the mental health system in addition to the trauma they already had. I have seen this kind of thing repeatedly, though not to the level of severity of the person described above.
I am working on my supervisory credentials, and I will share this perspective with anyone that I supervise, because it is not as rare as we would like to think.
Catherine Folio, Teacher, Effort, PA, USA says
Thank you very much for your comments here, Sara. As a client with both CPTSD and DID due to developmental trauma, it has taken me 70 years to be correctly diagnosed with both conditions and to find practitioners of appropriate treatment. The latter is still a work in progress.
Dr Catherine Folio
Pennsylvania, USA
Sara Trembath, Counseling, Streetsboro, OH, USA says
Yes. It is definitely still a work in progress. I am hopeful that since there are more continuing education courses on these topics both through nicabm and other companies that provide educational material, over time, more practitioners of all types will be able to recognize and treat these hidden, but not rare conditions.