[JamesVI]

Assuming you are in the US, a psychiatrist isn’t going to involuntarily commit you unless you threaten to hurt yourself or someone else. (It’s fine to say that you’ve had those thoughts in past, but if you say that you are thinking of doing it now then they have to do something both because of the law and because of liability issues).

If your symptoms are “in remission” then now is a perfect time to talk to someone. They won’t feel under time pressure to prescribe medication and they can do a full work up to figure out what the issue is, and help prevent future problems.

As other people have said, many mental health issues have overlapping symptoms (my personal favorite is that chronic sleep deprivation can look almost identical to ADHD), and diagnostic techniques and treatment regimes do change over time. Leverage the massive investment someone else has made in medical school to get a reliable diagnosis.

If you get a diagnosis and are in treatment I think you’ll find it easier to honestly explain both your gap in employment history and why you are worth taking a chance on now.

That said, be aware that psychiatry does suffer from the same over-prescription problem as the rest of US medicine and that there are financial incentives for hospitals to direct you towards ECT (it’s a “procedure” so they can charge more than for a simple office visit).

[schizo89]

So you're telling that they can apply ETC to a person reporting paranoid schizophrenia symptoms? Who on earth with some of critical thinking remaining would volouturaly give up for such a procedure?

[JamesVI]

All I’m saying is that the schedule of payments for medical care in the US is largely driven by what Medicare pays for each treatment code. The Medicare payment schedule is set by a board that is largely dominated by “procedural” doctors (surgeons). The only procedure in psychiatry is ECT, so a psych dept can charge a lot more for ECT than (say) a course of CBT.

I’m not trying to imply that psychiatry is coin-operated, but if ECT is “funding the department” there is an incentive to propose ECT, even if the science doesn’t support that.