Pyjama Girl asks: "Does your GP know?"

Pretty shocking, but not really surprising. Replace the term "sexuality" with "mental health", and it's my guess that you'd get much the same findings. It is only a guess though, because the BMA tell me that they haven't researched fear of - or actual discrimination by - the medical profession on grounds of mental health. But I base my surmising on plenty of evidence from other sources.

For instance, there's the case reported last year of a doctor who failed to spot that a woman was dying of lung cancer and instead treated her symptoms as psychiatric. She died after telling her GP that she was incontinent and had been coughing up blood for weeks. Yet because she had once been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, that's all the doctor went on.

And then there's the woman quoted in another report, saying that when she went to her GP with a breast lump, he "sent a referral letter stating 'over-anxious patient, had nervous breakdown at age 17 (20 years ago!). Consequently I was greeted by the specialist with 'well, you're a bit of a worrier aren't you?' Every physical illness I have had for the last 20 years has first been dismissed as anxiety, depression or stress."

It's a scenario that's not entirely unfamiliar to me. Some years ago, I had the pleasure of coming off a particularly vile antidepressant. It wasn't the famous Seroxat (paroxetine) that has become famous for its withdrawal effects, but another one in a similar class that is known for causing vile problems when you are taking it, and sometimes even harsher withdrawals. I came off it pretty quickly - from a very high dose down to nothing over the space of a few weeks - and it all seemed tickety-boo until I hit a low threshold. And then I began vomiting blood (as well as displaying other worrying symptoms). I was rushed off to A&E for a night of clutching those strange little upside-down cardboard bowler hats. Tests revealed no reason for the bleeding, but as it was a rather unusual withdrawal effect I was told that I might have an ulcer. I did the usual NHS routine of taking some sort of medication for however many months, followed by a blood test to check for an ulcer. All the time I felt terrible. Finally, I had the blood test and went back to get the results - but alas, my lovely, supportive GP was on holiday and in his place was a locum.

"The good news is that you don't have an ulcer," the locum said to me.

"Why is that good news?" I asked. "Do they know what it is?"

And so began a conversation where he told me that it was good not to have an ulcer, and I politely told him that I'd prefer to have a known, treatable condition, rather than going on living with the symptoms while wondering what on Earth had caused my ongoing gastro intestinal problems after coming off an antidepressant.

At this point the discussion got a little vigorous, with him pretty much suggesting that I should just keep taking medication for this particular side effect, and me saying I'd really like a bit more info and stating that perhaps we could just leave it until my usual GP, David, was back from holiday. Which was fine. Until David gave me a print out of my notes and there it was - the documentation of my little meeting with the locum. I don't have the text in front of me, but it was along the lines of "patient became aggressive and confrontational when told blood test was negative. Suggest behaviour linked to mental health and personality issues".

"No, no, no, no, no," I wanted to scream. My behaviour, which may have been confrontational but was certainly not aggressive, was linked to the idiot doctor who had been sitting there patronising me and, in retrospect, making clear assumptions about me based on a bit of paper with a diagnosis written on it. But you can't go around screaming "no" at doctors when you've got a mental health diagnosis, because it just proves their point.

I'm not entirely sure how you stop a GP from knowing that you've got a mental health diagnosis (although 18 percent of people responding to a Mental Health Foundation survey a few years back said they hadn't disclosed), particularly when secondary services write to your GP every time they see you.

Some woman by the name of Dr Quinn, who has been my GP for almost two years, gets a lot of letters about me, and it seems to have affected the treatment I receive. It's got to the point where I'm not entirely sure that she actually exists, because on the rare occasions when I need to see a GP I'm told to call in the morning to make an appointment, yet it's never Dr Quinn's office I end up stepping into. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen the same doctor twice. They just refer to a diagnosis and the last letter from my shrink ... and who can blame them for not seeing past that?

But why anyone thinks I'm going to trust a new GP is beyond me. I've had a few great ones, superb even, but there's no way I'm putting my trust in another until I know exactly what assumptions they are making about me.