If I had a penny for every fellow psych/counseling student I met who was there because they found mental illnesses or rape trauma or whatever else “fascinating” or “interesting” or “freaky” I would be able to pay off my massive student loan debt.
These people are FUCKING TRASH and they are EVERYWHERE. THE PROFESSORS USUALLY FIT INTO THIS TOO! Psychiatrists! Psychologists! Counselors! Don’t you know, mentally ill people are so fascinating! Or maybe they’re just sooo compassionate they want to help people–but if you say “Can we not pick rape or domestic violence for our group presentation topic? I may have a panic attack researching them.” Guess what? The rest of the group will meet behind your back and then tell you in the middle of class that they changed the topic to DV by majority rule.
Or just date a friendly counseling student, mutually decide to break up, and wait a few days for them to text you to kill yourself because you “have a lot going on” and that “no one will be able to love you.” Watch them use your abuse history, your ED history, your mental illness history against you using what they learned in class. (I saved the text and threatened to blackmail her if she contacted me again, but YMMV.) This person is probably a licensed counselor somewhere in the state of Georgia now. :) Awesome, right?
Psychiatry has historically been an incredibly oppressive institution. “Sure, just send your pesky civil rights activists, LGBT people, disabled family members, and disobedient wives to the mental hospital to be raped, drugged, restrained, and otherwise violated!” And it’s not a lot better these days. If you’re a black woman driving too nice a car, you can be involuntarily committed. In fact, you can be involuntarily committed for almost any reason, AND THEN THEY MAKE YOU PAY FOR IT. That’s tens of thousands of dollars. Even if you’re uninsured.
And that’s not even getting into the fact that the DSM is such bullshit that even the lead editor of the fourth edition is calling it out! Diagnoses like Borderline PD have been used from the beginning to further oppress women, abuse survivors, etc. I’m not saying don’t identify with that label if it helps you in some way, but please know that professionals almost always use it to punish or “mark” problem patients. When patients, usually women, refuse to take drugs or other treatments they don’t feel are right for them, doctors pull out the BPD label. Doctors are more likely to involuntarily commit you and other horrible things if you have the BPD diagnosis. And that’s just one of many examples of harmful or punitive diagnoses.
So if you’re a neurotypical psych or counseling student, there’s a 99% chance that you should go fuck yourself. Do us all a favor and change your fucking major, because you’re probably a piece of shit. I spent 7 years with wastes of space like you and now that I’m out of the field I wish I’d done it sooner.