beneficii wrote:
Otherside wrote:
Bipolar is overdiagnosed. I guess whereas ADHD was the "trendy" diagnosis for psychiatrist to give in the nineties, it's now bipolar. Having a depressive episode and you occasionally feel happy some of the time? There's some psychiatrists that would label you as bipolar. Bad behavior in a two year old toddler? Bipolar. So on, so on...
Psychiatrists can be wrong. After all, all they really have to go on is what you tell them. There's no tests as such for personality disorders or bipolar.
While it is true that what they have to go on is what you tell them (and what you show them in any other records and what people who know you might tell them if the doctors bother to investigate that far), it is nevertheless the doctor's job to do a proper job of probing and, as the doctor I went to for my second opinion says on his blog, "to be a good reporter and ask follow-up questions." Otherwise, you just get a 15-minute session for diagnosis without properly hashing out all the information your patient is giving you vs. doing your darn job and really working to get a clear picture of what has been going on with your patient. As my doctor said, often the patient doesn't know what's all relevant and what's not; a patient often doesn't know what information they need to give for diagnosis.
Exactly that. A 15 session for a diagnosis isn't long enough. Especially if they're going to be prescribing mood stabilizers/ant-psychotics/benzos, and they're not exactly pleasant or non-dangerous drugs. I've had this problem on a review recently. Which lasted a grand total of twenty minutes. Of which fifteen was me having to repeat stuff to him which should have been on that file he had right in front of him (Such as my hospitalization earlier this year, which he apparently had no idea about, despite the fact that I saw him soon after I was discharged). Ironically, I've gotten more help out of five minute GP appointments. Not that she can really do much except herang him about med prescriptions.
One of the first assements I had though soon after I was referred to the mental health team lasted ninety minutes or so, and my parents were brought in and asked what they'd noticed. And even then, she discussed it with the team before diagnosing.
04 Nov 2013, 11:32 am
