Yesterday I ended up meeting with a counsellor at school for an intake appointment. Yes, that’s right...I actually went through it, and it was interesting to say the least. Anyway, this appointment was supposed to be a sort of evaluation session to figure out what kinds of issues I’m having, what type of counselling would work best for me, what I wanted to get out of this and establish that patient-counsellor relationship, amongst other things.
I started and left work early to make it on time to the health clinic on campus. It was a tiny office that you had to ring into, in order to protect patient confidentiality, which was sort of comforting. What wasn’t so comforting was all the paperwork I had to fill out upon arriving there. Most of it was pretty general: allergies, medications you’re taking, family medical history, etc...but once it started asking questions like, “Have you or anyone in your family been diagnosed with depression?” or “How often do you have thoughts of suicide?” or “When was the last time you considered harming others?” or warning me that “the clinic must take reasonable action if they suspect that there is a potential for you to hurt yourself or others”, it got a little intimidating. I asked myself a couple times if I was actually going to do this. I didn’t want to be looked at as depressed or suicidal or have the cops called on me by doing this, but I still carried on with the questionnaire anyway. Even more intimidating were the questions asking what issues I hoped to resolve. I couldn’t help feeling just a little pathetic writing down that I was having trouble maintaining my relationships and interacting with people. And it’s still a little unsettling that somewhere out there, there’s a record from myself in writing, which tons of medical professionals have access to, stating that I might be gay.
