Yesterday when I was at the psychiatrist appointment, I met with her physician's assistant first alone. The assistant started asking me questions. There was at least 10 pages worth of questions, and that was after at least 8 pages of questions I had already filled out in the waiting area. On the questionnaires I filled out in the waiting area, I just wrote about the depression and anxiety with one mention of mood swings in my prescription chart where it asked why I was taking Topamax.
When the PA started asking about my current meds (I think it was on the 3rd sheet of questions that she asked), she point blank asked "So have you ever been officially diagnosed with bipolar?" She asked it as if I had written or said that I thought I was bipolar. It caught me off-guard. I mean all I said was the mood swings as a reason for Topamax, and she automatically went for bipolar. I guess that's probably normal. I said that I had been diagnosed with Borderline, but said there was some talk between the last pdoc and counselor about bipolar but they had never mentioned it to me. After she was done with the 10 pages, she said she was going to go get me another questionnaire to fill out. She came back and handed it to me. It was a two-page bipolar questionnaire, and when I was filling it out, it was pretty obvious they were about to diagnose me with bipolar.
So now... I'm bipolar too. I don't want to be bipolar too. I already had enough mental health diagnoses.
My disorders:
1) Major Depressive Disorder
2) Anxiety disorder (don't know which one for sure, can't ever get a straight answer, but I assume it's Generalized Anxiety Disorder)
3) Borderline Personality Disorder
4) Bipolar Disorder
5) Sleep disorder (once again I can't get a straight answer on which one)
13 comments:
I went to a doc but stopped going before they could make any diagnosis official for me. They were going for a Major Depressive Disorder and a Schizoid Personality Disorder.
It sounds like you have a lot to deal with, but you'll always be more than the labels that people might give you.
You can't have both major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. In order to meet the diagnostic criteria for bipolar, you have to have episodes of major depression, so the bipolar diagnosis would replace the MDD diagnosis.
Also, if your anxiety symptoms only occur during episodes of depression, hypomania or mania, you wouldn't technically meet the criteria for anxiety disorder as those symptoms would be part of the mood disorder.
Mood disorders also cause sleep disturbances, so again, if your sleep symptoms happen at the same time as your episodes of elevated or depressed mood, they can be attributed to the mood disorder.
So you should be able to reduce your list of diagnoses to some extent if you want to.
I would question the bipolar diagnosis, too, if I were you. "Mood swings" as experienced by those with bipolar are different from the mood SHIFTS we experience with BPD. Emotional lability is not the same as having bipolar, but extreme emotional lability is a symptom of BPD. Don't let them give you something that might not fit you in the end. It will affect your treatment course, and unfortunately, it may affect how your treatment team treats you. Questionnaires are not always the ideal way to diagnose; a good tool, perhaps, but they can biased depending on who authors and administrates them.
I'm deeply skeptical about all these diagnoses - I'm no shrink, of course, and no doubt they are deeply wise individuals who live in some rarefied intellectual atmosphere that is beyond my comprehension, but I would have thought that in order to know that something was wrong (with a person's mind), one would have to know what a mind looked like (as evidenced by behaviour), when it was RIGHT, such that you could see for yourself where the differences between yours and this objectively perfect "right mind" lay, such that you could work towards that level of perfection. Have they told you what a right mind looks like?
I dunno, if I went to a car mechanic, and he gave me a whole list of things that were wrong with my car, but he couldn't tell me what a car looked like that was in full working order (and thus, if he didn't know this, he couldn't possibly fix my car), then I'd tell him to fuck off, and then I'd find myself another mechanic!
Matt
Er, that's bollocks. Them, not you. That's not a thorough diagnosis, you need far more information than that to diagnose people. You should not diagnose bipolar with a two page questionaire.
I hate this new culture of diagnosing anyone with mood swings with bipolar. It's not a fucking holiday, and not everyone who has been depressed is bloody bipolar.
If you are bipolar then you don't have major depressive disorder.
To be honest, from reading you for a long time, I don't think that you have bipolar disorder. I do think you have BPD though. I don't think bipolar fits you at all- from what I've seen of you, your moods are extremely reactive, which is a feature of BPD, not bipolar disorder.
Yeah I have to agree with the others. Pretty much all of the disorders you have, INCLUDING Borderline, run on the spectrum of Bipolar Disorder- if that's what they are going to go with. That includes depression, sleep, anxiety, all your bpd stuff, etc. Instead of feeling overwhelmed with many diagnoses you might perhaps feel relieved that your condition is traceable to a single disorder, though complex, that can be treated by a specific treatment protocol that you probably haven't tried entirely until now. I hope things simplify for you. Best of luck.
The Bipolar diagnoses sounds like crap. From personal experience, I was diagnosed with Bipolar when I was 17(25 now) by a doush doctor who didn't take into account that a 17 year old teenager likes to sleep in and stay up late. At the time I never had nor have I ever had mania. Now I may have pissed away $200-300 "feel good" money attributed to my BPD but that doesn't constitute mania.
If they make you pause and question their practices or a diagnoses, speak up or get out. Don't be like me and live in a coma like state for two years due to un-needed medications, just because one person's best guess is that you should. Good luck to you.
I have no profound insight to add, so all I'll say is that I'm praying things work out and that the overwhelming feelings you have right now will subisde as you recieve the correct treatment. Question everything - this is your health and your life they are dealing with!! You deserve to know the whys.
I wish you didn't have to join this "group". On a lighter/ heavier note: don't you hate all that damn paperwork!?!?
I agree with the person who said you can't be diagnosed bipolar with a questionnaire. I was inpatient for the first time and the doctor talked to me for several hours before giving me the diagnoses, asking me questions about this or that. And since bipolar by definition includes depression, surely you can't have a depressive disorder co-existing; it would be part of the bipolar. Good luck with it.
Carolyn
http://diaryofabipolar.wordpress.com/
I agree, the doc needs to pick a dx and let that be that, there is just no way one person can have all of those labels. I think bipolar would have come up first before anything else. And as others stated, it can replace so many other of the dx's (depression, sleep issues, etc.)
At any rate, one thing I know is the doctor's have said this about my daughter (who has had ALL diagnoses given to mankind)"the drugs all treat the same thing". Seriously, so-called experts have said that.
Just be comfortable with how you feel on what meds or no meds, and you know yourself better than anyone else to know what it takes to feel good.
Dear BPD:
I'm not sure you won't be diagnosised alien next visit, this means you still do not qualify for your secret biplar decoder mood ring, or will be let in on our secret hand shake. I know the Penguins have been watching you from a distance and the mothership has hovered over head at embaressing times in your life, and have found no definative data at this time!
Yours truly
Stan
Its funny. I've been around since before there was an official diagnosis of "BPD". Does that mean that I didn't have BPD until the diagnosis existed? Why not look at our mental states as a continuum, where it is possible to fit into one or more pigeon holes at the same time? I believe these diagnoses are useful only if insurance companies and medical professionals live up to their end of the bargain, otherwise, why should they be employed while I am not?
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