Iatrogenic Harm

TW- I guess medical/healthcare professional trauma? And mention of meds, bipolar, anorexia, su**idal ideation
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This is really long so I don’t know if anyone will be wanting to read all of this. I’m feeling very fragile right now. My situation is in July 2024 I started the autism/ADHD assessment with a psychologist but then I had my first massive manic/psychotic episode and spent 2 months in hospital and got diagnosed with bipolar. Then I was under the care of public youth services. I finished off the assessment with the private psych in April 2025. The public service isn’t qualified/doesnt go anywhere near ADHD. But the focus was to get me stable with antipsychotics before looking at ADHD.

From July 2025 I was prompted often to go find my own psychiatrist and get out of the public service as it’s only supposed to be for crisis.

I was terrified to find a psychiatrist and in autistic burnout with lots of trouble managing the executive functioning of finding a psychiatrist, GP and psychiatrist. No friends, no partner, only my Mum who lives 4 hrs away. So I finally found a good GP. And they suggested an online Telehealth service for a psychologist. The public service discharged me in December 2026. I asked heaps of questions over email with the Telehealth service admin (Dokotela) to make sure they would put me with someone neuroaffirming. I sent through a shit tonne of supporting documents including my autism/ADHD report, letters from past psychologists, hospital notes, a 9 page summary of my entire lifetimes worth of mental health struggles and diagnoses.

I finally had my appointment with the psychiatrist a month ago. I was extremely anxious for it and had no support person as mum couldn’t get work off and drive down to me. So I had meltdown because she was 10 mins late to the call and I rang mum in tears and yelling, terrified that I had done something wrong IT wise and missed it. She comes on the call and goes “you NEED to calm down. I’m a healthcare professional we’re always late”. Then she says “you sent through A LOT of documents. I did read them all but it was a lot”. Then we do the verbal ADHD assessment and I can barely get my words out, stumbling over my words, she’s getting increasingly frustrated with me. I’m freaking out that she won’t accept my psychologist diagnosis as a lot of my ADHD symptoms in childhood weren’t obvious due to high academic achievement before my life fell apart completely after school. The she says she’s confused because she thought she was only doing a once off ADHD assessment with me not ongoing care. Which nearly sent me sobbing coz I’d emailed the admin so many times explaining clearly what I needed. The she starts telling me that I need to engage with a dietician IMMEDIATELY that my lipids are unacceptable (I am very overweight) and I’m trying to tell her I had anorexia as a teen and haven’t had a healthy relationship with food since I was age 11 but that I can’t afford the psychiatrist, psychologist, OT AND a dietitian all not on NDIS all with my 30hrs a week of retail. And she ignores me and keeps ranting about my weight. Then she says I’m way too many and too high mood stabilisers and we need to fix that and she’s talking about stimulants and I’m trying to tell her my dad has schizoaffective and my uncle has bipolar. And everytime I can get my words out she rolls her eyes and raises her voice. She finally settled on starting me on strattera and intuniv and lowering me off something else. But she didn’t tell me anything about what I’m supposed to do if I become manic or suicidal. She didn’t go through any of the side effects of medication [edited by moderator] and what the serious side effects are that i should be aware of. She didn’t tell me I need to make a GP appointment first in order for the pharmacy to be able to actually fill my script so I wasn’t able to start it til 3 days later.

The month goes by and I had a very unpleasant reaction to the medication [edited by moderator] and noticed no benefit from the other medication [edited by moderator]. Thankfully my OT helped me write down my symptoms and dates or I would have been screwed. But the call starts and she starts going absolutely crook at me because I don’t know how many mg of the medication [edited by moderator] I’m taking. I was struggling to speak and holding back tears. I went and got my Webster pack and she’s snapping at me telling me to read out what it says and I’m reading it and she’s yelling” that doesn’t make sense!” And I say I’m sorry I got confused, I’ve just been taking the Webster pack as the pharmacist instructed. And she listened to me read out my symptoms and said I think we stop a med [edited by moderator] so that was good. And I got to ask her my question about if the other medication [edited by moderator] doesn’t work and we want to try stimulants, I’m worried if she takes me off the mood stabilisers I can’t try stimulants in the future and she agrees so that’s good. But the last time I swear she was saying she was going to take me off this particular med. But the she goes “we should take you off lamotrigine” and I said “well that one was the only one that allowed me to get out of bed” and she sighs and goes well the lithium then. And I just feel so effing overwhelmed and confused because she seems to chop and change her thoughts all the time, doesn’t explain to me why at all or what she’s thinking, doesn’t give me any time to reply and then gets frustrated at me. It’s like she’s never worked with autistic people before in her life which is so incredibly frustrating coz I was told repeatedly she would be a good fit for me.

But here is where it gets worse. She forgot to send me my scripts!!! And the stupid Telehealth service has no phone call to ring on their website or google. So I sent an email at 2pm that day. Heard nothing back. Thankfully I had a range of other medication [edited by moderator]. So then I had to book a doctors appointment for the following morning and miss and hour of work. And the GP defended her and said “everyone makes mistakes” and I said “I literally paid $400 for this appointment and she didn’t even send me my scripts?” And the I told him how she cracked this shits with me not knowing what dose of the medication [edited by moderator] I was on and he said that’s a tactic doctors do to make sure their patients are managing their meds correctly? But like she yelled at me multiple times over 10 minutes? Then I showed him her summary letter that she had forgotten to send him. But it wasn’t clear whether I was meant to stay on a dose or go up more [edited by moderator] and I swear that we talked about going up [edited by moderator]. So the doctor had to guess and gave me more. So I go the pharmacy to get my script filled and then they bring out this Webster pack that is wrong [edited by moderator] And apparently she instructed them to make this one a month ago. And then I lost it and had an autistic meltdown and was yelling at the psychiatrist coz they were going to make me pay $120 for a Webster pack that wasn’t correct and they refused to pack it for me and I rang my mum and was yelling and swearing and trying not to cry and then I tried to ask the pharmacist again and said I’m sorry I know it’s not your fault but it’s so incredibly frustrating coz it’s so expensive and my psychiatrist is so shit. And then I was forced to pay $120 for this Webster pack and now I have to take it all apart and pick out all the meds at home. So than I lost 2hrs of work and had to go back to work absolutely beaten down. And then I got a text message from the psychiatrist at 4pm apologising and sending through the scripts but she’s sent through a different amount [edited by moderator] so I sent a message today to clarify and she hasn’t replied.

It’s just everything that I was terrified would happen, did happen. She makes me feel so so unsafe and I have so much trauma around psychiatrists already. But I guess at least she’s listened to me and given me [edited by moderator]? So now I don’t know what to do coz I HATE her and I don’t want to feel this shit every time I have an appointment. But it would be ridiculous to pay 1K to be reassessed by a new psychiatrist right?? I really want to. But because I did 40hrs in my shit retail/hospo job over summer up from 30hr in spring and now I’m back down to 30, I lost my concession card. So my Medicare safety net is $2700 not $864. I’m currently at $1694.

I don’t know what to do but I’m just so miserable coz she is so arrogant and so shit and so bad at dealing with autistic people. And all my fear came true. But do I need to just toughen up and ignore my hatred for her? Coz wasting another grand would be dumb (I could do this though without going into financial distress as I’m fortunate enough to have over 10K savings). I just don’t know what to do. I really, really, really hate her but spending all that money is not wise. Can I at least (politely and using corporate email speech) express my frustration that she didn’t send my scripts or letter to my doctor and that she instructed the pharmacist incorrectly to pack my Webster pack and I lost $120, 2 hrs worth of wages and couldn’t get out of bed all of the following day? And that I find her arrogant and combative and a shit psychiatrist. Could any of you put that in corporate email speech for please?

Also I found it worrying that she gave me no instruction what to do about if I got manic? Like I guess she just assumed I’d know to go to the GP? And that she didn’t go through the side effects of the medication [edited by moderator] with me and I had to look up the NPS leaflets myself later? And I get so confused and scared when she keeps saying get rid of other medication [edited by moderator]? Like what does she mean get rid of? Like completely? Decrease a bit? Decrease a lot? I just feel incredibly upset, angry and hopeless about this whole situation. Changing big heavy meds like this is such a big deal and I’ve felt so physically and mentally horrible. Oh wait I forgot something: I told her I’d been excepting lots more mood swings, anger and a lot more su**cidal ideation than usual over the past month and she said “well yeah but that’s just your mental illness”