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Another perspective: it is extremely stressful to be "accused" of having a psychiatric disorder. O.K., If the shoe fits, it may be in the patient's best interest to wear it. But, the larger problem is, psychiatrists can generally always finds a diagnostic label that fits and can't be fought: how can the patient prove he/she doesn't have it? Most degenerative neurological problems are accompanied by symptoms that fall within the realm of psychiatry: anxiety, memory disorders, depression...It's a Catch-22. If the neurologist is unable to come up with a diagnosis - and it often takes years for neurological problems to develop sufficiently to diagnose - psychiatry can always be moved in with a sure-fire diagnosis that is difficult to dispute. I have some very solid friends with no psychiatric history with very serious health problems that took some time to diagnose. In every case, somewhere along the line they were falsely "accused" of having psychiatric problems: "you're anxious...it's just stress...are you sure you're not depressed?" These insinuations usually caused my friends some embarrassment, as if they were inventing symptoms & it was all in their heads. One friend almost died - of celiac sprue - before receiving the correct tests & a diagnosis. In the interim, her life was made miserable by the implications that she was inventing, or a psychiatric basket case; she was further weakened by the symptoms of her illness. "Physician first do no harm". Well, loosely flung psychiatric diagnoses can DO great harm! I do not view the fact of having a psychiatric diagnosis as a cause for shame, at all. But, when the patient is given a diagnostic label that frees the physicians from having to look further for physical causes of complex problems, there is something viscous going on. And when doctors cling to that diagnostic label in the face of evidence to the contrary, i.e. psychotherapy and psychotropic medications aren't helping...that is even more viscous, oppressive and self-serving on the part of doctors. Your story makes me see red! I hope you find your way to some very high caliber practitioners, and that you let the ones who failed you know they failed you, if that is the case, and that you hold in highest esteem the one who kept an open mind and stood by you and the possibility that something else was afoot. Lynn H. [log in to unmask] ________________________