Welcome to my new blog!

I've been on both sides of the couch and think I can lend something to the conversation about mental health. Telling my own personal experience can, hopefully, give others strength and hope that things can get better. I'll talk about other topics, too, and show what coping skills I use to get myself through, both adaptive and maladaptive.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

You're in luck! We have a diagnosis for you!

If you go to a psychiatrist, you will leave with a diagnosis.  This isn't a proven fact, but I have yet to meet anyone who went and came out with the doctor saying, "I'm sorry...there's nothing wrong with you."  Of course, generally speaking, people do not go to a psychiatrist unless something is "wrong" with how they feel (or the people around them feel).  It's not like primary care and prevention...you're going there because you feel like you need to. 

Over the years, I've had many diagnosis'.  My first psychologist said I had "dysthymia," which is a mild depression that lasts for 2 years or more.  I would later be diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder (recurrent), and Borderline Personality Disorder.  If I, as a social worker, were diagnosing me, I would diagnose myself with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, recurrent, and Anxiety Disorder including panic.  Now, if you have cancer, they don't diagnose you with Leukemia and then say, well, it sounds more like breast cancer now.  But, in psychiatry, depending on the doctor you see, they can change them; add things on.  Seems like a craps shoot sometimes.

So...what would you be diagnosed with if you showed up in a psychiatrist's office?  Would you have a personality disorder, a perception disorder, a depressive disorder, an adjustment disorder?   And then what?

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for following my blog...I will add you as well and when I get a chance I need to update my blogroll. What a loaded and revealing question.

    When I was working, it was amazing how many different diagnoses that my clients would have over the years...some way off the mark desite evidence to prove otherwise.

    I actually have been stable with my diagnoses over many years. Some I had to wrestle with and tried to talk the doctors out of them...denial is such fun.

    However, I do agree with my current diagnosis of Major Depression (recurrent), PTSD, Dissociative Disorder NOS, Borderline Personality Disorder and Eating DO NOS. What a list. My course of treatment includes psychotherapy four times per week currently...attempting to lessen this and psychiatric care. After a long time of playing the crap shoot of what will work with medications, I feel like I finally have the right balance. The rest of my symptoms has to do with the hard work in therapy... :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. That are quit a lot of serious diagnoses you got. I don't know your history form reading this one post. But I know for sure if I had gone to a psychiatrist 20 odd years ago I would have been diagnosed Paranoid Schizoprenic and be put on heavy medication. Instead I saw a psychologist and had therapy.

    ReplyDelete