Psychiatrists

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Well, for the last few months I have been racking my brains as to whether my lifelong 'disorder' should be described as moderately severe schizoid personality disorder (which has nothing to do with schizophrenia, by the way, and just leads to social difficulties) or as some form of asperger's syndrome. Since I can't tell which of the two my symptoms are due to and since I really wanted to know my doctor gave me an appointment with a psychiatrist to discuss it. Today I had the appointment and the psychiatrist said she wouldn't be able to tell whether or not someone had some form of asperger's and therefore couldn't be of help. Instead she gave me the option of a referral to a psychotherapist, with the proviso that the psychotherapist won't be able to give an answer either. So I feel disillusioned about the whole business of psychiatric diagnoses. It is really frustrating knowing that something is wrong with you and that the specialists don't or can't even attempt to identify what it might be.

Well, I can say that it takes time!

I worked with my own psychiatrist for more then 5 years to find the proper diagnoses and treatment.

Unfortunately mental disorders are complicated to treat and diagnoses because there is so much communication and ideology involved in it.

i was thinking of visiting a psychiatrist but then this thread makes me rethink
because its just probably childhood abuse and PTSD which makes me different and i dont think it will be fully treatable

It's probably a question of luck and circumstance whether you get a psychiatrist who can and wants to help. The one I saw didn't take the trouble to find out anything at all about me, was completely sceptical as to why my general practitioner had sent me to her and only had 25 minutes to spare for me to present a lifetime of symptoms, which of course I didn't in such a short time. On the other hand I had an informal evaluation at the autism centre in October where the person who saw me gave me the necessary time to explain my symptoms, was very supportive and understanding, took me seriously and even gave an unofficial diagnosis, though because he didn't have a doctorate he couldn't make a real diagnosis. Ironically, the psychiatrist, who seemed to know nothing about aspergers and was completely uninterested in the whole question could have given an official diagnosis if she had chosen, a diagnosis that would in fact have been worthless because she didn't have the expertise. So it was in fact right that she didn't diagnose anything. I had persuaded myself over the last few months that I was schizoid rather than anything else, but my partner says I'm definitely not schizoid and definitely a case of asperger syndrome, which I'm not sure about, so I wanted the psychiatrist to help me decide this question because it actually makes a lot of difference which of the two you have, even if they can be hard to distinguish. I think my situation may be quite common but I assume and hope other people do sometimes meet with more helpful psychiatrists. Don't let my experience deter you from seeking the help you need.

Psychiatrists are a hit and miss. Sometimes psychiatrists can be utter crap. Sometimes they are great, though, but most of the time they are in between. Ultimately you have to know yourself. If you do not have trust or knowledge of yourself then how can you trust the psychiatrist to reliably give you a diagnoses that isn't pure s**t??

as far as my case goes any medicine would not help me and they would suggest me to keep myself occupied which i am already doing

Deep down, I agree with you that you need to know yourself. I'm not really sure why I bother so much about diagnoses. It's still up to the individual to make up their mind whether the diagnosis was right or whether the psychiatrist or whoever knows what their talking about. What I want to do is to be able to stick a label on my 'syndrome' or 'disorder' or whatever it is and move on. I've learnt to live within my boundaries and do ok, so it's not as if I need a diagnosis for any purpose. It's a bit like seeing a strange animal (oneself), knowing almost everything about it and yet not being able to identify the species because you don't really know where one species ends and the next one begins. Or being able to understand something written in a foreign language without knowing which language it is (which is something which does actually happen to me sometimes).

Once i had visited a psychiatrist he sat with me for 5 minutes and diagnosed me with paranoid psychosis. He prescribed very strong medicines which almost send me spiralling down

after that i feel its waste to visit one self diagnosis is better

That's terrible.

imagine the number of wrong diagnosis and wrong medicines, dosages being given to patients and long run effects on them

I was prescribed antidepressants for 2 years 30 years ago and still have side effects (notably difficulty in seeing moving objects as moving objects and not as one long thing that stays still over the whole area of the moving object). It is really annoying because the original depression is long over, the tablets didn't help and yet the side effects are still here after 30 years. Though in that case the diagnosis was right (I WAS severely depressed as diagnosed), it was just the medicine that was ineffective and harmful. The psychiatrist I saw last week has given me a referral for psychotherapy but made no diagnosis, which I suppose is better than her making a hasty one. It was just disappointing that she didn't seem as if she could be bothered to look into my 'syndome' or symptoms or whatever and just referred me to someone else (I still have to find a psychotherapist to actually take on my case, so I've just got a kind of general referral.) In any case, neither aspergers syndrome or schizoid personality can be treated with medication so there is no danger of getting the wrong medication since I don't intend to ask for any. I'm not too sure what a psychotherapist can do either but I would like someone to help me deal with the problem of coming to realise that I have a disorder of some kind, even if no-one can decide what it is . So maybe it's worth seeing one.


sabbe sattaa bhavantu sukhitattaa