I (18, agender) have been struggling with severe mental health issues since early childhood. Unfortunately, this has been a mostly solitary battle. For years, my parents — especially my mom (36F) — dismissed my symptoms as dramatic outbursts or cries for attention. I was repeatedly told I was "just acting out" or "being over-emotional," even while I was experiencing debilitating depression and episodes of psychosis.

During my tween and early teen years, I felt like I was screaming into a void. I wasn’t lazy or dramatic — I was genuinely suffering. But no matter how bad things got, my cries for help were met with condescension or outright mockery. This built up over time and culminated in multiple suicide attempts, the most recent of which finally forced my mom to acknowledge that something was seriously wrong.

After that particular attempt — which happened about a year ago and turned violent, leaving both of us physically injured — my mom made some major changes. She moved us two hours away from our hometown in an effort to give us a "fresh start." For the second time now, she put me into therapy and started working multiple jobs (like Uber, DoorDash, and now applying to work at a salon — she’s a licensed cosmetologist) to help support us financially, especially since this new city is more expensive and my treatment adds to the cost of living.

And I do appreciate the effort. I really do. But even with all that, her attitude toward my mental health and treatment hasn’t really changed. She’s still incredibly reluctant about medication. In the past, she’s made comments like, “I don’t want you to turn into a zombie,” and has expressed fears that I'd become one of those “doped-up nutjobs in psych wards.” Whenever I experience side effects or just plain struggle with symptoms like exhaustion or a flat emotional affect, she immediately chalks it up to me being "lazy" or "ungrateful."

At first, she was supportive — or at least acted like it. She would tell my providers that I seemed to be doing better, but that slowly changed. Over the past few months, she’s gone from saying I was improving to insisting to every doctor and therapist I’ve seen that the treatment “isn’t working” and that I’ve become a “zombie” — again, her favorite word for me when I’m too quiet or emotionally flat.

These constant criticisms, on top of everything else, started to wear me down. I began to question whether any of this was worth it. If the person I live with — the person paying for my therapy and medication — doesn't even believe I’m getting better, why should I keep trying? I already feel like a burden. I’m constantly reminded that everything is expensive and difficult, and now it just feels like I’m wasting her money on a treatment she clearly doesn’t believe in.

So I stopped taking my meds.

It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. It happened slowly, over the course of about a month and a half. I thought maybe I could tough it out without them. Maybe that would make her happy. Maybe I wouldn’t feel as guilty.

But as you can probably guess, my mental health spiraled again. I was barely able to get out of bed, slipping back into dangerous thought patterns, and needing her help to even make it through the day.

When she realized I hadn’t been taking my meds, she completely lost it. She screamed at me, called me names (which, sadly, isn’t new), and threatened to have me institutionalized. When I tried to explain that I stopped taking the meds because she had convinced me they weren’t helping — because she made me feel like I was wasting her time, money, and energy — she refused to hear it. She doubled down and said she was tired of taking care of me and would rather just "let the psych ward handle it."

Now I’m stuck in this situation. I’d move out if I could, but she controls all my legal documents and hasn’t given them to me despite multiple requests — she always says she “forgot.” So I’m trapped here, feeling powerless, guilty, and unsure of what to do next.

So Reddit... AITA for refusing to take my medication? I know it wasn’t the right decision in terms of my health, but with everything going on, I didn’t know what else to do. Am I really the asshole here?