Anybody Familiar With GAF Testing For SPia or Depression?

koyaanisqatsi

I'm wondering if anybody has any familiarity with Global Assessment Of Functioning (GAF) testing and how effective it is in accurately categorizing a person's actual functioning as a so-called "normal" person. I didn't know GAF testing existed until it bit me.

Disclosure: I've applied for disability based on depression and SPia. I'm not trying to cheat the system, but I think the GAF testing was nonsense at best. Disability doesn't exactly represent the "good life", but it may represent the only life. It's my last resort for now.

I had been diagnosed as being SPic and depressed by a quite well-qualified private practice psychiatrist in 1991. It didn't understand it well at first, but over the years, I've developed a fair understanding of the SPia disease and how it's _always_ affected my life. I'm 57 yo old now, and I've been unable to beat this disease. In fact, I believe that it has worsened as I've aged. Medications have either not helped or have had very unacceptable side-effects.

Well, I moved back to my rural home town in 2004 and got hooked up with a free "Behavioral Health" clinic at a hospital not too far away. I handed them the diagnosis. But they did some sort of GAF test based on some very simplistic questions (that I believe a SPic would not answer very honestly anyway). The results are that I do not suffer from SPia or Depression!!! Of course, they keep asking me to reschedule sessions that the clinic itself no doubt receives $ for from someone someplace. I finally terminated the sessions (intended to be a temporary break) because they did not seem to be of _any_ help. Malpractice and fraud? The sessions I had with their psychiatrists never lasted for more than 10 minutes per session, nor did they _ever_ ask any questions that one might consider probing and or that would lead to some insight into my mental state. A psychiatrist needs to try to read what is and what is not being said. I talked about suicidal thoughts, having no friends. But like most SPics, I may not have been as forthcoming as I should have been...do we really want anybody to know who we really are and what we are really like? I can't help but think that their use of whatever GAF testing or questions they used completely blew the diagnosis. After all these years I know myself, _some_ of my problem, and my limitations in dealing with my problems.

_________________
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to
another with no loss of enthusiasm."
-Winston Churchill