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Summary
Chanyeol pulled up the referral file from Dr. Han.
Patient: Male, 34. Presenting: Major depressive disorder, estimated onset 3 years prior to admission. Substance dependency — prescription benzodiazepines and alcohol. Acute incident — intentional overdose, discovered by close contact, hospitalized. Currently post-discharge, stable. No prior psychiatric treatment history.
Notable: Patient maintained full professional function throughout entire duration of illness with no external indicators noted by colleagues or family. High-functioning concealment profile.
He read that last line again.
High-functioning concealment profile.
He knew what that meant. He’d written papers on it. The particular architecture of a person who had become so skilled at performing wellness that the performance had essentially replaced the internal experience. Not lying, exactly — something more complicated than lying. A dissociation between the public self and the private one so practiced and so complete that eventually the person themselves lost track of where one ended and the other began.
It was one of the hardest profiles to treat.