Posted by Racer on November 10, 2005, at 12:35:33
In reply to i could be bipolar please read, posted by chand2407 on November 9, 2005, at 22:54:52
Take a deep breath now, and repeat after me:
"I am the Patient. I am not the Doctor. It is not my job to tell the Doctor my diagnosis, nor to prescribe my own Treatment. That is the Doctor's job, and it is OK for me to let him do it."
I've read a lot of your posts, and it looks as though you're trying to figure all this out, and that's great. While it's a subject of debate, I think it's better to be involved and informed as a patient, rather than simply relying on a doctor to make every decision. On the other hand, it can be taken too far, and that can have negative consequences for us.
By the way, I do the same thing, although I'm trying very hard not to.
As for your question, the answer isn't as straightforward as it might be, because diagnostics is an inexact science. Right now, there's a growing sense amongst psychiatrists that ALL patients with both depressive and anxious symptoms are actually bipolar. Thankfully, there are still some hold outs who say that those are two separate conditions. Whether your doctor decides that you are bipolar, or both anxious and depressed, will likely be affected by where he stands on this debate. The bottom line, though, isn't so much what your diagnosis is, but whether the treatment you receive for it is effective. And the treatments for both have a lot of overlap.
I'm pretty definitively diagnosed with both anxiety disorder and depression, and my doctor has talked about trying things like Lithium, rather than anti-depressants. He says that it can be quite effective for unipolar depression. It could be that you respond well to a treatment generally used for one, despite a diagnosis of the other. What's more, the anti-psychotics are very useful for anxiety symptoms, so whether you're truly psychotic, or suffering very severe anxiety symptoms may not matter much, either.
Remember: Give the doctor a chance to do his job, and let the effectiveness of the treatment trump the diagnosis. Good luck.
poster:Racer
thread:577319
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051106/msgs/577462.html