Hope, lemme tell you a little story---When I was in college, I went to the "counseling center" and mentioned being suicidal and the counselor talked about did I want to change my major---but he *also* referred me to the infirmary to talk to the psychiatrist. Okay, he was so-so, but at least he knew his limitations.
Then I went to the infirmary psychiatrist, and I told him I thought I was manic-depressive and he said that since he couldn't see it, he couldn't diagnose it, and suggested I only take classes half-time and basically resign myself to living life as an invalid.
I went on my way convinced psychiatry could do nothing for me and I was on my own.
It nearly killed me, because I *do* have a major mental illness.
Fortunately, along the way after nearly killing myself (a couple of times), and nearly getting committed, and scaring my closest friends half to death, I ended up in the office of a *competent* psychiatrist.
He diagnosed me, not correctly yet, but close enough, and got me on medication that helps---my diagnosis got refined to the right one later. Bipolar II (what I have) is hard to tell from Major Depressive Disorder---it wasn't incompetence, it was lack of data, and it didn't harm me because the doctors were competent and were following my condition---so once enough data accumulated, they fixed my records. No harm, no foul.
I didn't find out until *years* later that the shrink who tried to tell me to just live as an invalid was at the far extreme of the field in his *extreme* reluctance to prescribe medication.
He should have told me so. Not telling me his opinion was an extreme minority was unethical.
But he was *ONE* bad shrink----and I almost let that *ONE* bad shrink get me killed by keeping me from getting the quality treatment that any of the vast majority of competent and ethical shrinks could give.
Don't make the mistake I did. Please.
Hope, I've known more than half a dozen shrinks in a professional capacity. When you have a mental illness that requires medication, over the years you accumulate various shrinks just for medication management.
I've known *one* lousy one, and a couple of so-so ones out of about ten.
Consider the possibility that the shrinks and pseudo shrinks willing to work for these places are the bottom of the barrel, professionally.
Consider that a *competent* shrink would have a successful private practice and *not* be working in the middle of nowhere in someplace as sucky as Provo Canyon.
It sucks for the kids, but even though it's no excuse for the staff to do the things they do, accept for a minute that working there sucks for the staff and that's part of the reason they get their jollies of pathetic power plays with the kids.
Now, would a *competent*, *ethical* shrink work in a shithole like that if they could get a better job?
To be a *good* shrink, you have to have empathy and ethics---which maybe suggests why the "therapists" (and I'm being generous by dignifying them with the term) who wind up at PC can't get a better job elsewhere.
Please don't let the profession's sleazy bottom of the barrel affect your opinion of all shrinks, or keep you from getting the genuinely helpful assistance any of the vast majority of the profession's *good* practitioners can provide.
I know it's hard to trust that you can find a good shrink when you've had a bad one. I can certainly relate. But please trust that you're *much* more likely to find a competent one *outside* a BM institution than you were to find one *inside* one.
By the way---the first competent psychiatrist, who got me on medication that actually helped me---was working at the mental health clinic run by my county health department, and was based on ability to pay----so lack of money doesn't have to be any bar to getting basic, good quality treatment.
What experiences and history teach is this-that people and government never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
--G.W.F Hegel (1770-1831)