Help Doctor's office forcing me to take a survey? What should I do?

[Feeding Pigeons]

So to give a brief explanation of myself and the situation, I've been suicidal my whole life, nothing has worked, and finally I found a ketamine clinic that I could barely afford. I've gone here once so far, and my next appointment is tomorrow. However, before seeing the doctor the woman at the front desk asked I fill out a survey on my phone called OutcomeMD (first result on search engines if you look it up), this survey's first question was am I or have I ever been suicidal. Now, right off the bat I told the woman at the front desk that I was uncomfortable with filling out this survey, she asked why, I said I was uncomfortable, and she pressed the matter. I ended up filling false answers in just to complete it and move on.

I don't like this, at all. They told me to do it because answering the questions establishes a "baseline", but I don't believe this. A quote directly from OutcomeMD's website:

"Fully customizable, easy-to-understand, authenticated reports can be generated from the OutcomeMD Dashboard to highlight your great work and help negotiate better contracts with payers."

The woman at the front desk, even though I DID NOT SAY ANYTHING about having a fear of other people reading my results, offered up the information that "The results are not going anywhere". Now, truthfully my concern with answering the questions honestly was that I've learnt the hard way through experiences that telling someone youre suicidal is the fastest way to get them to deny you treatment. I don't like lying, but I feel like I'm forced to with this.

Either way, I don't want to do this survey. I intend to fill the survey out with lies again and when I actually meet the doctor face-to-face again, to tell him I am not comfortable with doing the survey. If he gives me the reason of wanting to establish a baseline, I could answer back that there is nothing wrong with establishing a baseline face-to-face each session, we are going to do that regardless, rendering the app survey useless.

I'm afraid to outright decline doing the survey because I'm worried he would deny me treatment if I were to say that. I know I could just lie on the survey and everything would go accordingly, but it really bothers me on a deep level to lie like that. I was wondering what would you guys do in my situation?

 

[Flippy]

I'm not sure I understand what a Ketamine clinic is? Do they give you ketamine or is it like a rehab type thing?

I understand your fears though, you are quite right that there seems to be this perverse trend to denying treatment to people who are suicidal. It's frustrating that this usually means that in order to get treatment that might help improve your suicidal feelings, you have to admit having suicidal feelings, which in turn leads to the meds being denied.

I'm not sure what to do really. Are they multiple choice questions, like rate your suicidal thoughts 1-5? You could perhaps indicate a low rating and see what happens. Will you still have to pay if they don't offer you treatment?

The issue is, if you fill in the questionnaires each time and your "suicidal score" doesn't change then they might withdraw treatment. The double bind here is, if you indicate the score is lower they try to push you to withdraw the treatment asap.

So if you don't improve they say "it's not working" and withdraw it, or they say "great it's working! Now let's ween you off it as quick as possible."

 

[Thingsneverchange]

I also think you should talk to the doctor directly. I think you should maybe try being honest with him. It's just my opinion. The surveys aren't that important but if you lie to the doctor he might feel like it's useless or I don't know. I'd say try being honest. If you ever want to talk about it, hmu :)

 

[timf]

Over 50 years ago when I was in the Army I was ordered to fill out what was called a "hometown news release form". The purpose was to give the Army local publicity. I made statements like before joining the Army I was a parasite on the welfare rolls. I was threatened with charges for falsifying a document, to which I said that I would file charges for issuing an illegal order. No further action was taken.

There are bullies who will attempt to get you to do anything. A corporate bureaucrat can be resisted by saying that she has not convinced you that her request is necessary, will be kept confidential, or in your best interest. You are not a slave to do as you are ordered. If you cannot be persuaded, then you should resist bullying.

 

[Feeding Pigeons]

I'm not sure I understand what a Ketamine clinic is? Do they give you ketamine or is it like a rehab type thing?

I understand your fears though, you are quite right that there seems to be this perverse trend to denying treatment to people who are suicidal. It's frustrating that this usually means that in order to get treatment that might help improve your suicidal feelings, you have to admit having suicidal feelings, which in turn leads to the meds being denied.

I'm not sure what to do really. Are they multiple choice questions, like rate your suicidal thoughts 1-5? You could perhaps indicate a low rating and see what happens. Will you still have to pay if they don't offer you treatment?

The issue is, if you fill in the questionnaires each time and your "suicidal score" doesn't change then they might withdraw treatment. The double bind here is, if you indicate the score is lower they try to push you to withdraw the treatment asap.

So if you don't improve they say "it's not working" and withdraw it, or they say "great it's working! Now let's ween you off it as quick as possible."

Yeah patients receive ketamine infusions at this clinic. I had not even though of the possible reprecussions of answering falsely like that.

I also think you should talk to the doctor directly. I think you should maybe try being honest with him. It's just my opinion. The surveys aren't that important but if you lie to the doctor he might feel like it's useless or I don't know. I'd say try being honest. If you ever want to talk about it, hmu :)

I'll try to bring it up to the doctor.

Over 50 years ago when I was in the Army I was ordered to fill out what was called a "hometown news release form". The purpose was to give the Army local publicity. I made statements like before joining the Army I was a parasite on the welfare rolls. I was threatened with charges for falsifying a document, to which I said that I would file charges for issuing an illegal order. No further action was taken.

There are bullies who will attempt to get you to do anything. A corporate bureaucrat can be resisted by saying that she has not convinced you that her request is necessary, will be kept confidential, or in your best interest. You are not a slave to do as you are ordered. If you cannot be persuaded, then you should resist bullying.

I hear you, believe me. Its just a lot harder to resist bullying when they may hold the key to your recovery, but you're absolutely right.

Thanks for the responses guys, I really appreciate it. I will keep what you've all said in mind. I'll update the thread when I return today.

 

[wait.what]

Are you talking about the PHQ-9 form, the one where you check off multiple choice boxes about questions like "in the last two weeks, have you had little pleasure in doing things?" If so, I don't think the form is especially nefarious or given with ill intent. It seems to be popular with psychiatrists whose practice is about providing a specific treatment, such as ketamine infusions, and not really about doing patient interviews about how their past week went, etc.

I think the main advantage of the form is speed. The doctor gets the same sort of information from the form that they would have gotten from a 20 minute conversation with you. Not that you shouldn't have a psychiatrist who actually talks to you. It's just that my experience that's a different doctor than the one who administers specialty treatments like ketamine. You tell your regular psychiatrist about thing like your soul-sucking job, your irritating mother-in-law, your dead parakeet, ect. For the ketamine doc you fill in a form.

That said, I don't see why the ketamine clinic's office staff should give you excessive grief about refusing the form. They need to know how you're feeling now so they can tell if you're getting better as treatment goes on. However, it is possible to look another human in the eye and ask, "So how have you been feeling lately?"

If you've ever been forced into a psyche hospital against your will, I can understand your reluctance to admit that you feel suicidal. The trick there is to never, ever tell them you have a plan, unless you actually want to be taken to a hospital for some reason.

 

[callme]

I also think you should talk to the doctor directly. I think you should maybe try being honest with him. It's just my opinion. The surveys aren't that important but if you lie to the doctor he might feel like it's useless or I don't know. I'd say try being honest. If you ever want to talk about it, hmu :)

Agreed. Will also cut negative and personal detail-revealing interaction. Plus the doctor is being dishonest. If the patient is transparent they ought to react better, trust them more.

 

[netrezven]

Hope that at least the professionals there do care and can help. But threatment, that is starting with "you can't possibly lie in the survey we forced you to do", don't deserve optimistic expectations.