How long did it take to get your diagnosis?

hi @Newby

I have no diagnosis. I've suffered terrible & crippling MH for years, left me with no job, no friends, no family, no sanity, no sleep & debilitating physical ill-health. I finally got better with the right meds from the right psychiatrist. That's what worked for me, not saying it works for anyone else. I have no diagnosis - it doesn't bother me because I have symptom relief. I'm on 3 meds and that's all I know.

I remember being obsessed with a diagnosis - am I BPD or rapid cycling bipolar or schizophrenic? But that was before I got symptom relief. Now that I feel better I don't care about a diagnosis, I don't ever think about it. What I'm concentrating on now is how to manage my irritability/social skills. I'm trying to get back into work & I find certain people very irritating at my volunteer job so I'm trying to figure out how to work well there without getting a reputation for being irritable & short tempered.

@Newby a very long time i am 21 and started seeing people since around 1-2 and only got diagnosed "properly" recently so roughly 20 years. still i did care greatly about the name before i thought having it would actually make things better but it doesnt really do much the only thing it does is validates that you have a reason to be struggling to the rest of the world and possibly yourself. still it can take a very long time and is a super frustrating process but at the end of the day it only really matters what is causing you to have issues not so much the over arching issue. idk if i am expalining myself well probably not sorry. anyway the bipolar thing is hard though i had been having issues with that as long as i can remember and no one really took it seriously until it got a bit out of hand. i would also say though that if you are good at presenting as normal then it makes things harder i am very good at appearing normal from a distance and often people think i am lying because they never see me talking back to voices and stuff but like why the heck would i do that infront of other people anyway honestly. but hopefully hospital is helpful and you can sort out something that helps you.

Hey @Newby it took some time for me to reach my current diagnosis. At first it was depression then query bpd then bipolar then schizophrenia then finally schizoaffective disorder. I’ve been seeing mental health professionals for most of my life and it still took them over fifteen years.

Don’t despair though, diagnosis isn’t everything. Emphasis should be more geared towards your recovery.

Hi there. Much the same story here. Treated for depression for years before it was considered as anything else.

I was an anxious child who turned into an anxious teenager who was depressed and suicidal half the time and like a frieght train the next. It was (non medically) treated as depression from 14. At 18 I partied 7 nights a week till dawn and held down 2 jobs, which I maintained for about 8 months I think before crashing. At 20 my first pregnancy brought some pretty bizarre thoughts about the baby being a demon - that everyone laughed off as first time mother anxiety then post natal depression that was written off as first time mum exhaustion for 6 months. Got pregnant again before anything got any better, had a traumatic birth and spent the next year considering the best way to take the kids with me when I checked out of life.

Now just so I can say something positive about the early years of my children's lives, I have to say that the doctor I literally stumbled across when I became pregnant the 3rd time was totally awesome. He took on board everything I told him about the previous 2 and he went out of his way to make sure I was supported through the pregnancy, birth and months after that.

So fast forward a fair way I was bullied at work and after seeing a GP for anxiety I took her advice and went on stress leave. A mental health plan saw me seeing a counsellor who after 3 sessions asked me if there was an opposite to my depression which opened the conversation that led to being assessed and diagnosed with bipolar 1.

So that makes it almost 30 years before I was diagnosed properly. The 25 years in the middle were a rollercoaster of what are easy to retrospectively call manic and depressive episodes but I was only ever treated for depression. Naturally every time I was manic I would believe I didn't need to the anti depressants, I was unpredictable, unreliable and not entirely sure how my kids have ended up as level headed adults really given their hectic childhoods.

But to give you an actual answer before I ramble in the wrong direction - put it down on paper and give it to anyone you see for assessment. Write your 'life story' down briefly outlining the ups and the downs in dot point so it's easy to read. Insist that they read it first and if they don't refer back to anything you've said in it when they talk to you, ask them when they might start to investigate the part no one's looked at yet. Do a bipolar self test and take that to them. Even if they're right and it's not bipolar, it's not right to spend life cycling back and forth the mood spectrum so good luck.

The response I gave to the counsellor btw was "what you mean like is there an up to the down? I painted a house once. I missed a few bits doing it at night because of the way the lights shine but it only took 3 days. No I was renting. He wasn't impressed with my colour choices but the red feature wall was awesome."

@Newby Hi Newby 🙂 .... yes I must have upset the mods with what I wrote ... I hope it was helpful though because I really wanted to know my diagnosis so I could inform myself about it and take preventative measures against it. I know with my son2 his and mine diagnosis of mi was very important with gaining support from the NDIS for example. greenpea xxx