Author wishes to remain anonymous

At some point over an 18-month period a differential diagnosis is believed to have moved to an actual diagnosis of personality disorder. I was not told when that happened, the change was not recorded in any letters or on any system that I have been made aware of. It is also the case, that no one bothered to tell me, of the three conditions listed as differential, what a differential diagnosis was, which I was finally diagnosed with or explain any of the conditions in any depth that would have allowed me to both understand the situation and have a voice in it.

However, concerningly, what was or was not diagnosed, and when, made no difference to my experience.

As I review the medical correspondence, the carelessness and lack of clarity in the records remain upsetting. They also constitute a clinical safety issue the impact of which is highlighted by my account.

The care plans and medical letters were designed and written with an intended audience of the mental health team, my GP and myself. This said, the documents were not written in a way that I could easily have input to and, concerningly, it later became apparent that my GP had misinterpreted the information, assuming or believing, as others did, I was diagnosed with all three conditions from the point of the first care plan.

The approach taken by the mental health team gave more importance to my GP and others being aware of what was happening to me than for me to understand it. When I did raise challenges and stated I was not ill with any of the conditions, my claims were treated as if I should be pitied and managed out of my mistaken view.

It was only in 2024, 13 years later, that I was able to secure a review of one of the conditions at which point the reviewing psychiatrist, Dr [A] at the NHS Trust where I had been originally referred and treated, confirmed I had never been diagnosed with that specific one condition.

At this point, I was finally able to secure a correction to my primary medical record, using the letter from Dr [A].

Dr [A] was unsure if I had been diagnosed with the other two conditions, therefore, assumed both conditions had been diagnosed. He could not confirm when, across the 18 months I was seeing the first psychiatrist that the diagnosis had been made. As such, they remain on my primary records as a diagnosis, regardless of how many times I state they are wrong.

Dr [A], told me it did not matter that there had never been confirmation I no longer had a diagnose relating to a mental health condition as it would always be assumed, once treated, that the problem was fixed.

I pointed out that being diagnosed with serious mental health issues is not like being diagnosed with a broken leg that, once treated, can be seen to be no longer broken. I also confirmed his assumption was not correct and both the GP and others not only believed but treated me as if I was still ill, or assumed I was at risk of a relapse at any time, regardless of the treatment I had received.

The two remaining conditions fall within the category of personality disorders: adjustment disorders (F43) and paranoid personality disorder (F60), as per the ICD-10, the framework, in effect at the point of my differential diagnosis/diagnosis.

Both come with a heavy stigma attached in the public mind and, it seems, in the minds of ‘professionals’ in general. People treated me as if I was dangerous, an embarrassment and something shameful. Those who did not treat me as such tended to be from charities that than from official/government bodies.

From the start, even before I was referred to the mental health team, when I spoke of the issues I was facing and sought help through various parties there was a persistent assumption I was either ill or lying, the biases were baked in from the start.

The idea I was increasingly distressed due to not only my situation but the failed responses of those who should have been helping were ignored. Then my GP referred me to the mental health team.

The first psychiatrist, Dr [B], summarized his understanding of my life background and his initial throughs on the possible underlying mental health conditions in a care plan.

Documenting mental health issues showed a strong bias towards believing my claims were the result of mental illness rather than a normal response to a very real, traumatic and worsening situation.

This bias validated other professionals’ prejudice, their choices to ignore anything I said on the basis of mental illness. It was clear, a person suffering from a mental health issue cannot also speak the truth or be trusted. The care plan supported my branding as a liar.

The conditions, their application to my case and context, strongly indicated Dr [B] applied an arbitrary measure when considering whether or not my emotions were a reasonable response to my context.

I say arbitrary since there appears to be no measure in the ICD-10 to indicate what is considered the right level, as opposed to the wrong level, of emotion by which any doctor can consider the underlying cause or if there are wider mental health issues at play. There was also no objective justification provided to me.

Whilst I appreciate that a ‘measure’ such as a ruler cannot be applied to emotions, there are techniques which could provide a more objective assessment.

Rather, the determination of what was considered acceptable, or not, in terms of emotions was made by doctors, a GP and latterly a psychiatrist, who were very unlikely to have life experience relevant to the situation I was being forced to live through. As such they had no reliable understanding on which to make the assessment. Poor societal attitudes towards, and lack of understanding about the situation I was in, are also likely to have played a role.

I asked Dr [B] to look at the evidence rather than just rely on others’ opinions and his views. He refused stating it was not his role to review the evidence of my claims as this role sat with other organisations.

The problem with that was that I was not asking him to review it but use facts as a basis of his assessment. Instead, he was willing to accept the views of a social worker and those influenced by her, without concern for the inherent and obvious bias risk of that specific person’s position.

Whilst I have no doubt the doctors involved genuinely cared and wanted to help me, it was on their terms and based on their view of my world, experiences and, therefore, what was best for me. This patriarchal approach overruled my own wishes and, importantly, my reality and needs. As a byproduct they also overruled my children’s needs resulting in them being left at serious risk, ignored and, at times, called liars. The damage from this cannot be expressed.

Even as I presented as very distressed, seen to struggle to articulate my claims and fears in a structured manner, I was still managing to hold down a complex technical job, was seen as a good mum, and generally thought of well by most people who knew me and were outside of the specific situation I was caught up in. This evident conflict made no difference beyond the discomfort displayed by some at the disparity of my presentation depending on the situation I was in.

Professionals, keen to remove that discomfort, the discrepancy, were seemingly happy to grab the opportunity to be ‘certain’ I was ill, justifying the position using Dr [B]’s care plan, so removing from the conversation all evidence and my claims. My value and position as a member of society, already reduced by the referral, was removed as was my agency in any conversation regarding my mental health and my situation within the NHS and in the wider environment.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my distress continued to increase, which became ‘evidence’ that everyone but me was correct. It was like watching everyone mark their own homework and say they were 100% right every time. I understood this was not how things were supposed to operate but then this alternative reality was in front of me. I really felt like I was going mad.

I was infantilized, perceived as incapable and pitiable. I was held accountable for my perceived mental illness, it being seen as a weakness, a failing by me. Outside of the NHS I was blamed for it by most, treated as an object of shame and derision. Within the NHS environment whilst I was not blamed as such, but I was treated as if I had a responsibility for my supposed ‘illness/conditions’.

The lack of agency remains undiminished, my position as a patient and in society tainted by the stigma and associated shame attributed to having a mental illness, particularly related to having a personality disorder. Conditions I have never suffered from, but then, I am not allowed to claim that, as only doctors and other professionals are allowed to tell me what I am, or am not. They continue to assume they are correct particularly by themselves.

So what was this context that led to my distress and the claims of mental illness? Can I really be right that I was not ill and that all those people, feeding off each other, were really so wrong? Surely my claims are indeed signs I was and remain ill….

The year before being referred to the mental health team, I had been forced into the family court process after managing to run from my abusive husband. It had taken a lot to escape as he constantly watched and tracked me. He also used his control over my children by ensuring I could not leave without abandoning at least one of them.

He had repeatedly threatened my and my children’s lives unless I was ‘obedient’ and they did not annoy him. There was no definition to obedience only the whims he expressed and constantly changed. I cannot express the fear I was living with. I was also barely sleeping.

When I ran, he had and retained direct control over my job for at least a further 12 months, during which I faced a constant risk I would lose my job. It was 3 ½ years before I was able to fully remove his influence over my employment.

The court were not overly concerned about the claims of domestic abuse or that he had admitted to swinging a 7.5 kg claw hammer at one of the children’s heads when she annoyed him. Rather, the courts position was encapsulated in one judge’s comment, ‘she’s [mother is] out now so it is no longer relevant’, placing the process at a level of a contentious divorce between two parents who should know better.

When my now ex-husband leapt to attack me during an early court session, held in chambers which is where you sit across a table from each other, the judge criticized me and told me off for being ‘dramatic’ because I had jumped up screaming to escape him. He received no admonishment.

One of the many false claims about me by my husband, that I was just a ‘money grabber’, i.e making false claims to secure more money from him, as a counter to my and my children’s claims about him. The police recorded that phrase a justification to not investigate him. They also disregarded that I earned well in my own right and that the money and belongings I had talked about was legally documented as mine and withheld by my husband to my and my children’s detriment, preventing me from being able to rent a home and forcing us to couch surf.

My husband promoted the idea that my situation, homelessness and the risks he was creating to my employment, were ‘evidence’ I was an unfit mother who should have her children removed. He was already touting the idea of parental alienation.

When Children’s Services became involved, they were happy to support his position of parental alienation, almost immediately disregarding my and my children’s claims of abuse. They downplayed my husband’s admittance of swinging a hammer at one of the children’s heads to the point it was suggested I had made that up.

Perhaps it is relevant to mention, my husband was a very senior manager in the local authority from where the social worker ‘investigating’ the case also came.

He worked closely with [leading figure in local children’s services] as part of his role. The local authority later stated, in court, there was a serious risk of bias, but it made no difference to the judge’s view, the local authority’s involvement or their attitude regarding me.

The court gave my husband access to our daughter almost straight away at which point she started reporting physical abuse and neglect.

She then disclosed sexual abuse by her father, a disclosure for which I was blamed with the accusation I was making her lie i.e parental alienation. It was the same position the local authority previously supported regarding the claims from my older child.

My youngest was taken from my care and forced to live with her abuser. She was the only child in the case who was also my husband’s child.

At this time, I was facing homelessness again and the possibility my eldest child would also be taken from me.

Based on the social workers claims that I was the issue and repeated statements she believed I was mentally ill the police decided not to believe my children, or the councillor who had heard my youngest’s disclosure.

I do not think it is possible to describe the level of distress at losing your child to someone they are terrified off, is abusing them and has previously threatened to kill them.

At this point the GP, believing I was at risk of suicide, referred me to the mental health team.

The referral included concerns that he did not know what to make of my claims, as the social worker told him I was lying and mentally ill. He also stated in the referral that I asked challenging questions.

One of the questions I asked was how reliable it was for him believe a social worker from the organisation where the abuser was both powerful, and held significant influence not least given he worked with the Director of the department from which the social worker came. The social worker exaggerated my claims stating I believed in conspiracies, and this is what other professionals read. My questions and points just led to more accusations of paranoia with statements indicating a position that professionals were automatically above the risk of bias or undue influence.

The court now knew of my referral. That was all they needed. As far as all were concerned, they had been right, I was seriously mentally ill, a clear danger and guilty until proven innocent.

This is when I first met the original psychiatrist, Dr [B].

Can you imagine how traumatized, severely distressed, terrified and desperate I must have been?

I told Dr [B] about my situation, the background and the risks I and my children were facing. I told him I was not mentally ill but terrified and needed help. I begged him to believe me.

[It was] immediately assumed that my denial [of mental illness] was evidence of mental illness.

Dr [B] was aware that my background involved serious child abuse and how my immediate family had been maligned me across the extended family, leaving me isolated in life. He was aware I had later married a man who at first seem charming and kind, but had changed and taken control of my life, cutting me off from friends and surrounding me with his own friends and life, including control over my job and economic security.

He knew that, when I had tried to leave my husband, the abuse and violence had escalated exponentially. He was aware of my claims that my immediate family were supporting my abusive husband, as they feared if I was believed regarding my claims about him there was a very real risk their own history may surface and be believed.

I told him how my husband’s defence included that if I was lying about my parents, I was also lying about him. A circular argument that could work the other way, not least given my husband’s admittance to a seriously violent act.

When I met Dr [B] I was alone, isolated, desperate, very afraid, had lost all trust in the system, was in full survival mode, and I presented as such

Whilst Dr [B] believed me regarding my historic childhood abuse, but struggled deal with a patient who was in the middle of a current and severe abuse scenario. He found it difficult to believe a man in a powerful position, well off and held in high regard within his field, would be violent or that, in trying prevent the risk my parents abuse would surface, to protect their reputation, my immediate family might see the benefit of supporting my husband to silence me.

Dr [B] acknowledged there were clear triggers for my presentation but treated them almost as separate from ‘my condition’. His position seemed to question whether someone could be abused in more than one relationship.

I asked Dr [B] to take care in what and how he kept his records, already aware of how the court would pull in any information to use against me. He did not take me seriously at first. He did not believe my statements on how social care, Cafcass and the civil court were operating and saw my claims as paranoid.

He documented that I had asked him to take care, and the social worker used that to claim I was trying to control Dr [B], which she stated was evidence I was both malicious and a liar.

In being forced, by the Family Court judge, to hand over that first care plan to the social worker, [a young people’s advisory service], the court, I was also forced to give it to my abuser, providing his barrister with documentation which he and my husband leveraged my husband’s defence weaponizing it against me justifying undermining my credibility and that of my children.

None of the ‘professionals’ talked to Dr [B] or requested any clarity or clarification from him.

The social worker, [the advisory service] and the court were happy to promote and support the general weaponization, stigma, bias and deep prejudice held about mental illness, and support the attitude to my credibility, reputation and that of both my children.

One judge stated openly in court that he was ‘not interested in the mother’s opinion’, shutting down any defence my solicitor attempted to offer. In court you are not given the respect of a name, just a parental label.

After aspects of Dr [B]’s report were misinterpreted due to a lack of rigor in the court process and those working within it, Dr [B] took my claims about the court a little more seriously.

Nonetheless, Dr [B] continued to hold reservations regarding the risks I perceived from husband and the wider process.

I sat in the middle of these people suffering at their hands and becoming more and more distressed and desperate as each ignored and denied my reality to a greater or lesser extent. My ability to argue my position, express the risks and structure a narrative continued to be undermined as my terror, fear and hopelessness grew exponentially for both myself and my children.

The more I tried to tell people I was not mentally ill or lying, the more it was treated as ‘evidence’ of how ill I was and that it was clear evidence I was a liar.

In the social care and court process vilified and criminalized me for being mentally ill and the assumed lying that the label brought.

This played straight into my abusers aims and objectives, reinforcing his gaslighting of me and the wider stakeholders. It allowed him to destroy my reputation totally until I felt lost as to who I was, enabled him and others to cut me off from any chance of support from other agencies and the extended family, claiming that to contact me was dangerous and damaging.

The situation and system very nearly broke me. That was my husbands intention. After all, I could offer no evidence or any attempt to protect the children if I was no longer breathing and if I committed suicide, all the better, as it would have been just more ‘proof’ of my supposed dangerous mental instability.

I was felt as if I was living in another dimension, a place of utter insanity and danger, in which I was the only sane one.

Partially in a desire to find an end to the torture and pain, but equally under the pressure from all, including the mental health team, I began to doubt my own reality and truth.

The NHS response to my increasing distress was to call it a psychosis, justifying giving me very strong drugs to suppress my feelings.

As you read this perhaps you think I must be exaggerating, that this cannot be the truth – may claims about my family, my claims about my now ex-husband, my claims about social care, the wider legal and judicial process. Surely, they could not all have been wrong. It sounds unlikely, a little mad, perhaps delusional and paranoid.

If you do, ask yourself some questions.

On what basis is your perspective built? How much experience do you have of serious domestic abuse, of stalking, of child abuse. How much experience do you have of how the police, children’s services and courts handle such claims and without the added complications of the abuser also being a senior manager in one of the key originations investigating your claims.

Dr [B]’s care plan, claim of a psychosis, of defects in my personality and prescribing strong drugs to me simply validated the position of all those ‘professionals’.

At this point, things actually got worse.

When the court grew a little concerned the information from Dr [B] was not completely supporting their position it was decided a professional witness was required. He was happy to inform them I had been diagnosed with a serious mental health issue, and I was guilty of parental alienation, not of attempting to protect my children. He labelled my eldest child an abuser of her sister, alongside me.

If you are interested in finding out more about this type of witness and how they operate you can read Goodbye Mum (Tickler and Summers, 2025).

The outcome was, my youngest daughter was forced to live with her abuser, and suffer a lot more abuse, including sexual, for a further 13+ years.

My eldest daughter and I were also trapped in the abuse with my ex-husband given immense power over us which he used to continue his torture of us though out that time.

My youngest has now escaped from him and lives with me. Do not misunderstand me, we are not free but are much, much closer to it now.

Due to my experiences, I was close to suicide many times. If I had taken that step my voice would have been lost and my children abandoned to their fate.

But I did not die. I learned and I changed. I found new ways to fight to secure our freedom. I showed, and taught my children, to believe in themselves no matter what anyone says about them and to never give up.

I was forced to accept treatment for 3.5 years. I was never told what it was for, but I used it to survive, to learn and to grow.

Later I chose to take additional NHS treatment, on my terms, and work through the deeper damage done to me from the long-term trauma. This doctor, a psychiatrist, did not feel I showed any signs of mental illness.

I was originally diagnosed with a personality disorder because I was distress at being abused and at the abuse of my children by a very violent and dangerous person. The diagnosis was in no small part due to my reaction when the very people who should have protected us instead empowered our abuser, treated me as the criminal and trapped my children and I deeper into the abuse.

The decisions in the court and empowerment of my abuser were enabled by the NHS when they chose to view my normal response as something wrong with me, not with my situation and medicalizing the result of terrible experiences rather than working to treat the root cause of the problem.

In diagnosing normal behaviour as a defect, an illness, the NHS legitimized an attitude that the problem and therefore the fault, lay within and with me, not only allowing wider agencies to view me as the problem, but the risk and the danger. It was pure victim blaming.

Positioning me as ‘ill’, rather than in serious danger, empowered a redirection from the real problem, the abuser, to me, so supported his narrative that I was defective, specifically ‘mad and bad’, and not to be believed. It enabled him to strengthen his lie that, as the ‘healthy and normal one’, he was the arbiter of reliability, trustworthiness and truth.

It was not only the legal and justice system that consumed this lie but also the schools, extended family, work colleagues and many friends. After all, a senior psychiatrist had validated something was wrong with me, my claims and, by default, with my children’s independent claims, but not with the abuser.

Although I have been able to start to correct my primary record (GP record) I will never be able to find and correct all the documentation that was shared across the family court, local authority, everyone who had any involvement with my children including schools and wrap around care, other medical staff and places I will probably never know about.

The memory of my case, diagnosis and associated claims about me will remain in all those people’s minds, unchallenged, reinforcing the same prejudice that trapped me and my children in the abuse. These people will talk to others and share that prejudice. This includes the police, judges and social workers, who still believe they were right in their views so will continue to apply the same prejudice to other cases like mine, happy in their assumption they are so right even as they trap more people and children into abuse.

The cycle will not end until the NHS stop calling, and supporting the idea, that abuse victims are mentally ill and damaged. I will have to live with the fact that my reputation will never be repaired, nor that of my children.

Trauma and distress are not a personality disorder, an illness, but a ‘normal response to an abnormal situation’.

That quote is taken from a second psychiatrist who treated me for 2 of the 3.5 years. Despite making that statement, recognizing the truth of my situation, he did not correct any of the ‘diagnosis’.

If a situation is abnormal, a person’s response will reflect the abnormality, differing significantly from the behaviour of someone who is living within the parameters of what most would call a normal life.

Just because a doctor, or anyone else, has no experience of being stalked physically and/or online, of having their or their children’s lives threatened in very real terms, or being forced to hand over their child to a person who is abusing that child, does not make the fact I experienced, claimed it, and showed the natural distress from the situation, a paranoid mental state or a fundamental defect in my personality. Yet that is what the diagnosis stated; that is what the NHS position was, and remains.

It matters not that the GPs and psychiatrists acted with the best of intention, they were and remain wrong.

I and my children needed real help, we needed to be heard and supported to escape from the abuse, not for my children to see me and themselves called liars, with me maligned and stigmatized by the medical profession and wider society for something that was outside of my and the children’s control. I did not need antipsychotics, we needed real help.

In labelling me as mentally ill, suggesting my diagnosis meant my claims were unlikely to be true, with the result I was ‘confirmed’ a liar in other professional minds, my children doubted me and questioned their own reality. The abuser was able to use this to gaslight my youngest keeping her silent about the abuse he perpetrated on her for years. She and her sister doubted me and wondered if they should see me. Both children were left feeling abandoned not knowing who to trust. It is quite possible they will never recover from the harm and damage done.

In labelling me mentally ill, my ability and right to protect my children was taken from me, and them.

If there was an illness in all this, it was and remains with the abuser, those who knowingly supported that abuser and the system that holds victims of abuse as defective, mentally ill and liars.

The damage resulting from diagnosing a normal response as if it is an illness cannot be expressed and continues to harm and affect our lives.

When I asked for a review of my diagnosis by the NHS Trust (2024), wishing to first secure clarity on what I had actually been diagnosed, Dr [A] responded with what he stated he thought was the diagnosis. Note, he cannot say categorically that I was diagnosed with anything.

Dr [A] then told me not to challenge the situation ‘as it could get worse’ for me.

How much worse could it possibly get?

But the statement, warning, reminds me of when I was accused of ‘asking challenging questions’, a position which was included as a concern and key basis for referring me for a mental health assessment. It demonstrates a worrying attribute in the medical profession that women should not challenge doctors, let alone be distressed, at the risk of being accused of mental illness.

Dr [A] then told me a story about a woman he had treated. She had been diagnosed, and treated, for schizophrenia for 15 years. The reason? She claimed people where listening to her in her apartment. Dr [A] told me, after the woman had begged him to visit her flat, he did and discovered that, finally, the police had listened and then discovered listening equipment had been installed in her flat by someone else. She had been on strong drugs for 15 years simply because she told a truth that others chose to ignore.

Whilst ever doctors remain willing to view and diagnose as ill people who are responding normally to an abnormal situation, the medical profession will continue to fail us all.

Speak your truth: your own experiences can help create change

If you want to share your experiences around this diagnosis you can take part in Platfform’s Truth Project.

Platfform are campaigning for a review of the use of the diagnosis of PD. Add your voice to our call for change by sharing your story. We will share these with Welsh Government and use them to strengthen our campaign.

For more information, and to access the survey, click here.

If you are in a mental health crisis, please read this paragraph

If you have been affected by anything in this story and would like to talk to someone you can call Samaritans on 116 123. You can also call the national mental health support line for advice on 111 (press 2.)