An Autoethnography: Rochester Psychiatric Center, the Terrence Building era — one person's story

A first-person autoethnography documenting the author's three-month stay at Rochester Psychiatric Center's (now abandoned and scheduled for demolition) "Terrence Building" (ward Three East) in 1994, and the surrounding decades: a 1987 traumatic brain injury following expulsion from the U.S. Air Force for being gay before Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) was created, seventeen years of psychiatric misdiagnosis, heavy medication, and rounds of electric shock therapy (ECTs), correct diagnosis of TBI (2015) and autism with synesthesia (2017), and military restoration of honor with 100% service connection (2021). Offered as primary source testimony for the historical record on psychiatric institutionalization, adult autism, and the civil identity of autistic adults.