The psychiatrist in the windowless room on the second floor of the rehabilitation center in Utah didn’t say much. He asked a handful of questions, scribbled a few notes on a piece of paper and then, Millie Davidson says, he told her that she needed to take antipsychotics. Given the severity of her diagnosis, she should also sign up for permanent disability benefits, she remembers him saying.
Davidson declined the offer even when she saw the doctor’s paperwork, detailing her all-you-can-eat buffet of serious mental health diagnoses, which included schizoaffective disorder and bipolar disorder.
“Deep down, I thought, ‘That couldn’t possibly be me,’ ” says Davidson, who had just emerged from two years of living on the streets. “But I was weak from everything I had gone through and I was just so lost that I also thought, ‘Maybe that could be me.’ If a doctor was telling me this, then maybe he was right.”
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