Bipolar Bias from doctor- It can happen to anyone.

Wasnt sure where to put this. Last Friday I had to go to my primary for a rash that came out of nowhere. In addition I hadnt slept barely at all for a couple of days and I know it was due to stress (my pregnant daughter and her recent setbacks). My regular primary was not a available so I had to see whoever was. I ended up seeing Dr H- my mom saw her for a physical and thought she was ok.

I go in and the nurses there all know me. My blood pressure was high (which I knew because of stress and lack of sleep) I told the nurse about the rash and what had been going on over the last two days regarding sleep. She was very nice.
So Dr H comes in and asks me what's going on. I told her about the rash out of nowhere and the sleep issue. She looked at my chart on the computer and first thing: "Oh your bipolar! Well the lack of sleep is an indicator of Mania. Do you have racing thoughts right now? Whenever I see someone is bipolar and here about them not sleeping its a big red flag that they are having a manic episode".
I told her that no, I know what mania feels like, I have been stable for 15 years and this was stress. I told her that my doctor had recently retired and I only saw the new one once and would not be seeing her until after the new year. She persisted in talking about my 'mania' and how maybe I should consider going to the crisis center. I was flabbergasted. I again told her that I just need a good night of sleep and I would be fine. I dont know if any of you experience this but when I go a couple of days without sleep its like my nervous system is in overload. I feel physically and emotionally overstimulated. Emotional and like- shaky. I tried to ask her if she knew what I meant and she said she had never heard of that.

She suggested prescribing me trazodone (which I cant take) and then remeron which I cant take. Now, mind you she is just a gp. My psychiatrist should be the one giving me psych meds. She suggested temazepam which I had never heard of. She said she had to check something and left. She came back and said: "oh no, you are on controlled substances." ( adderall, and on 11/4 I filled diazapam for 45 pills from my old doctor) I do not prescribe these types of meds for people on controlled substances" I asked her what type was the temazapam and she said it was a benzo. I had no idea.

I was like " the new doctor hasnt prescibed any benzo and I wouldnt know until I saw her. All I needed was a day or two of sleep. She said she would get in trouble prescribing my anything like that. Our of curiosity I said "so if you literally gave me a script for 2 pills that would be risking your license?" She said it would because what if I had "all those benzo pills" at my house and she gave me temazapam and something bad happened they would question her.
I reminded her that I wasnt even there for sleep. I was there for a rash and was just provided background because she asked me what was going on. I told her I was fine and would handle the temporary sleep issue myself. Almost as an after thought she looked at the rash which embarassingly enough was on my left butt cheek. I thought maybe because I wasnt sleeping and hadnt laid down too much it was like irritation from sitting on my butt more. ( I am also in perimenopause and sweating everywhere so I thought it could be that as well.
So now I had to show this woman but butt. She looked at it and said it was probably contact dermatitis of some kind and would give me a cream. As an after thought she said "well if it develops blisters then its shingles" I was like : "what? arent I too young for shingles? My insurance wont even cover the vaccination for shingles because of my age"
She said nope, I am not too young. I have hear shingles were painful and I know that is not what was going on.
She proceeded to send the script to my pharmacy and decided to re-iterate the fact that I was manic and should consider contacting my doctor or worst case a crisis center.
I couldnt wait to get out of there.

This was like my worst fears come alive. I always fear going to a doctor for something and them assuming its a mental health issue and making assumptions or judgement. My irrational fear is like a doctor will deem me a danger to myself or something and I will have to worry about the authorities. I have only been in the hospital twice in my life and the last time was 16 years ago due to severe depression post pardum and bipolar meds being out of whack.

So my long post is just to share how even rational communication and honesty can put us at risk. How the hell are we supposed to want to take care of our health mentally and physically if this is the types of possible things that can happen with judgemental doctors and doctors that make assumptions. I have experienced judgements from ER doctors before but never an in office visit for something minor. I will never see her again and will only see the doctors there that know me. If I had been able to see them this never would have happened.
My goal in going was to make sure the rash was nothing to worry about and something to treat it. It wasnt for some doctor that only read notes on my chart and decided to play armchair psychiatrist and proceed to throw medications that are reserved for mental health issues at me. Who did she think she was.
I promise you that I am a good communicator. I make eye contact, I am honest. I wasnt all wound up. I am naturally a bit hyper, boisterous and positive and sometimes I talk fast but its nothing like a manic episode. The few times I have experienced mania it goes like this: Not sleeping, deciding to undertake some ridiculously unattainable project in the middle of the night only to leave it half down and a mess. One time I decided to completely clean out my filing cabinet and left folders and papers all over the kitchen when I crashed. My husband came down for work and took a look at the mess and knew it was mania.

I do not know why I am sharing this. I guess to warn people to always be on their guard with new doctors. Expect judgment and suspicion. Expect to not be believed. Guard what info you share and only with trusted doctors. If you need to seek treatment at the ER or with a new doctor for a physical non-mental reason check yourself and make sure to be on your best behavior because you are being judged not by what you say but by what you 'have' or what your medical chart says is wrong with you. I honestly had never had that happen before and never thought I would. So it can happen to the best of us. It can happen when we are actually in crisis and it can happen for something as innocuous as a rash on your butt.

Sorry that happened to you @sarahsweets I get a lot of questions about my hallucinations from regular docs. HUGS Kit

I have experienced judgment from health care providers just for being an anxious person who asks a lot of questions. I believe your story and it’s pretty scary that you were treated like this. She pretty much harassed you and she was definitely out of her lane with trying to advise you on psych meds. We are supposed to be truthful with our health care providers but that has really backfired on me at times. I’ve argued about medications I refuse to take and I’ve argued when they won’t listen to my valid concerns. Thank you for the warning. We have to be our own advocates when we see health care providers. I hope you are feeling better soon.

My goodness. I hate it when doctors get kooky about bipolar episodes. Sometimes we just have normal sleep issues, etc,

Sorry about that. When I moved here to a rural area there's no Pdocs so my internist had to write my meds. He was sort of freaked out but handled it much better than the doc you met with. Goodness!

All that for a butt rash? Seriously? Sorry you had to deal with a dipstick doctor. People so need schooled in bipolar.

How frustrating. Demeaning. I am up to my ears with the stipidity and lack of compassion from waaay too many MD's.

I am so sorry you had to deal with all this BS. I have said for years that the surest way to receive horrifically awful healthcare is to have a legit DSM 5 diagnosis in your chart. I have personally had a "renowned" neuro guy tell me to my face that he thought my stumbling and balance issues were due to me basically being FOS. Even though I showed him in his office what was going down. Well, guess what? He was FOS. I have a severe neuropathy, and am basically totally numb below the knee on the left side. This is why I occasionally stumble or fall. I cannot tell where my foot is in space.

So, I am so very sorry for your encounter. I hope you can find someone legit to help you. Someone who won't discriminate against you . You deserve so much better!

Reminds me of when I took my 4-month-old son in for his regular check-up at the pediatrician. This was a new doctor to us. (This was also back in 1998.) The second the diaper came off, he retracted his foreskin- didn't ask, didn't warn us, nothing. His ignorance made me mad. Luckily, pediatricians these days know not to retract a boy's foreskin, but to have him do it himself. And if he's too young to do that, just leave it be. We left the office and never went back.

I also had a doctor try to "force" me to get an IUD. I came in to get my copper T IUD out and get a diaphragm. He went into a tirade about the history of IUDs and why I should get the one with hormones in it (instead of the copper one), talking about people putting pebbles into the uteri of camels way back in the day. He also did a breast exam and being that I was still breast feeding, he expressed some milk! Totally uncalled for! Needless to say, I left there without any birth control. (He'd removed the copper IUD.) I think he just wanted the money for the progesterone IUD. This was January 2nd, 2001. So you can guess what happened: I didn't get any other birth control and voila! My third child was conceived within a week and born that September.

I can see how that doctor thought "lack of sleep = mania". But that is just one part of the equation - there are many symptoms of mania, and you don't have to have ALL of them to have mania, but at the same time, just one is not likely to equal mania. Getting your sleep under control is a good idea because severe lack of sleep MAY lead to mania, but as I said there are so many other factors that go into it. Bottom line is, she just saw "bipolar" and jumped to the conclusion that you were manic based on nothing more than that and she went galloping away with that idea.


Sometimes, doctors have asked about my bipolar in terms of which meds I'm on, for interaction purposes. My liver doctor says my liver issues have to do with the bipolar meds I have taken. Yeah. Great!



Doctors aren't gods and we must learn to stand up for ourselves when things like these happen.

I had a PhD psychologist misdiagnose me as having schizophrenia. I had DID with a psychotic alter and after integration now have psychotic symptoms with PTSD episodes and bipolar mania but because my father, mother, and sister have schizophrenia she diagnosed me the same way. Well, her diagnosis ended up worming its way into my electronic medical records at the major health system in my city. My therapist NEVER called my psychiatrist for a consult. She just diagnosed me and I was stuck with it. When my psychiatrist found out he was, shall I say, extremely displeased. He did all he could to get my diagnoses corrected on the electronic records.

When I had breast cancer, the hospital I got treatment at, sure enough, had schizophrenia in my record. They wouldn't talk to me about my cancer without someone being with me. They thought I wasn't competent to hear treatment options on my own. My psychiatrist had to once again straighten out the diagnosis. The rich irony is I WAS a cancer researcher at the time. My name was literally on many of their clinical trial paperwork. I was so tempted to show the oncologist that she had signed off on one of my research trials so I couldn't be that "incompetant".

Yes, non psychiatrist MDs can make a mess of psychiatric diagnoses. And so can therapists who shouldn't be diagnosing complicated psychiatric conditions.

One of the reasons I kept it a secret for so many years that I was transgender was because I was for sure no medical doctor or therapist would believe that a person with mental illness would also have gender identity issues as well. I was worried if I brought it up they would say “your mental illness is just confusing you. You don’t really want to be a boy” and that did happen back in 2011 but thankfully I’ve found a medical team that I can trust and will work with me.

There’s a lot of stupid people out there though.

Sorry I’m late to the party.... Doctors are borderline clueless.... please don’t go thinking anything else. Some are borderline stupid even. I’ve only ever met 1 doctor in 30 who knew what he was doing.... That was a cancer doctor....