I want to tell my story about the Johnson county Mental Health Center. How this institution has treated me over the last 13 years or so has been troubling to me and others. The Center has been very unresponsive to my concerns.
I will not say what happened to me what seems now so many years ago, but it was devestating. I got over it, got married and had several beautiful children. Shortly after I had my first child, I found out from someone who had also gone to the Center that the Center was to keep my file reports with my therapist permanent.
I was in disbelief. A relative of mine who's a therapist said he throws his files away after seven years. I thought that was what everybody did. So I called up the Center. Sure enough, my worse fears were confirmed.
The staff told me my files were permanent and, in short, there was nothing I could do about it. As if to make things better, they said I could get a copy to review the content. I promptly did this.
As I sat there and read about a years worth of notes, I realized that my doctor had written down everything I'd said in detail. Worse than that, he made judgments about me (evaluations) that he never told me about in the sessions. I called the Center and told them to take all these comments out. They said all I could do was add my objections in writing.
How ridiculous! A doctor makes a damaging comment and my comment is going to correct or outweigh the opinion of a doctor in other people's eyes? This is what has caused me great heartache and anguish ever since. The Center assured me that no one would ever read my file, that it would be safe forever. I do not feel confident in their assertion.
The point is—those files are out of my hands. I have no control. If I die suddenly, how can I ever know that someday in the future, something will change like the law that will allow someone to look at my file who I don't want to look at my file. And what happens if someone I know one day works at the Center and comes across my name and wants to see why I went through therapy?
And what am I to do? Who am I to tell? A lawyer? If I do that, everyone will know I went through therapy. The whole world will know. I may want to tell my children what happened to me. I don't yet know. But if I decide to tell them, I want the decesion as to when to tell them to be mine.
I don't care what the Center says or how often they reassured me. When my files are kept in anybody's hands but mine, they're not in my control. And this bothers me. It does more than bother me. It makes me go back and remember what happened to me and all the consequences right along with it. It disrupts and reverses the healing that had started.
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