Too quick to diagnose?

Has anyone else experienced professionals irl (in ''real life'') who are too quick to diagnose (or misdiagnose ) mental health issues?

Yes. I’ve had a mixture of quickly diagnose (one had even diagnosed but did not tell me), and given no diagnosis. Right or wrong? Who knows and who cares at this point?

I don't much care except for the errors on my record which I didn't take out. I did take one of the worst errors out.

I would rather be given no diagnosis than be misdiagnosed (whether or not they tell me)

Who cares? I do. Do ‘’they’’ irl care at all? I haven’t found that they do. That’s my personal experience. Minimising and saying it doesn’t matter isn’t helpful, to me. Or being prescribed the “wrong treatment” .. or simply being fobbed off.
that matters. Since I try to practise self care I dislike it when others fail to care. It’s unprofessional.

Not sure why I started this thread. Sometimes I don’t have the knack of starting threads that promote useful discussion.

I’ve read so much and found so many things to overlap, that it made me feel that I don’t care if I have a diagnosis or not— I’m still me. Forgive me if it came off that I don’t care about you because I do.

Hi @Fuzzybear

I've had that experience. I was misdiagnosed with a bunch of things (ranging from psychosis/psychotic/schizophrenia or something to bipolar to bpd to many other things that, when DID was finally diagnosed by different professionals in different institutions and OP treatment centers, that all the other misdiagnoses were found to be incorrect). I also experienced therapy abuse, which made it even harder for me to deal with treatment. I've tried the different treatments for the different misdiagnoses (at the time, truly believing that I had those misdiagnoses), but none of them worked. The meds made me lose more time and become more depressed (though that's not the case with everybody, but with my system it was), so a good Pdoc understood dissociation and weaned me off the meds and monitored me. I was way better with only talk therapy. DBT didn't help me at all! But for some people in the group I was in, it did. CBT really helped me, especially since it was simple, easy to remember, easy to use repeatedly, and transformed to my needs for dissociation and trauma. CBT comes in different forms, so if one type of CBT doesn't work, another type might. But until I was diagnosed correctly, I couldn't process trauma (still can't), EMDR didn't work, brainspotting made me dissociate more, and other options definitely didn't work. I have PTSD and DID as well as IBS, CFS, insomnia, and sleep-apnea. I also have a painful IPR stress fracture that never healed properly, so I cannot run without pain, and I can barely walk a few miles before the pain in that area (groin) starts hurting. IBS = irritable bowl syndrome, and CFS = chronic fatigue syndrome. The VA considers both IBS and CFS as related to PTSD and service-connected. It may differ for others who are not veterans. So the idea is for me to find a treatment team that can help me with all of those things in some order, I guess.

It's not so easy to do in civilian treatments because records on physical and mental disorders are all disconnected. Thus, it's easy to get misdiagnosed and for T's to miss the signs of physical disorders, etc.

I've gotten diagnosed in the span of an hour or a 30-minute quick visit by a psychiatrist. 30 minutes is a long time for psychiatrists, considering that they typically see patients for 10 minutes to assess medications. But still, without going through a full history, it's easy to misdiagnose someone. Further, I think that professionals should spend more time in getting to know their patients before making a diagnosis.

(((safe hugs))) to all who struggle with misdiagnoses.

It's hard to be misdiagnosed. I'm rambling here because I had the hardest time with misdiagnoses and mistreatments. I felt like I wasted my time and money on so many wrong diagnoses and treatments. It hurts, too, when you believe in one diagnosis and feel like the T is making it your fault for it not working, when in reality it's the treatment and misdiagnoses that were at fault.

I hope this all makes sense.

(((safe hugs))) for those who have had negative experiences with misdiagnoses and treatments and T's who were insensitive.

I'll write more later, but I wanted to ask if there's anything I didn't cover.

Thanks for this reply ((( safe hugs )))

Yes, misdiagnoses “suck”. Sometimes they are more harmful than others. I’ve also experienced therapy abuse.

Fuzzybear,

Thank you so much for starting this thread. Many of your threads bring about useful discussions. We do our best to support one another. For some reason, however, when I click on the "New Threads" icon at the top, not all of the new threads are being shown, so it is easy to miss unless we physically go to a person's profile and click on "statistics" and then on "all threads started..." I think. Otherwise, there's looking in the individual forums and scrolling, or clicking on "Today's posts" or "New posts" icons at the top. I'm still trying to figure out what all the icons and buttons on PC mean, LOL.

Anyway, I'm sorry you experienced therapy abuse. (((safe hugs)))

Misdiagnosis is common among those with DID. It's not easy for us to navigate the system and feel frustrated with different misdiagnoses and therefore mistreatments. Sometimes those mistreatments lead to "iatrogenic effects" or effects that have a different reaction than the one intended by the T. Iatrogenic effects are not necessarily "harmful" in the sense that the T intended it, but it feels harmful to us because nothing works when that happens. And sometimes the effects of certain things do actually harm us, or make our conditions worse.

(((safe hugs)))

Thank you for a great thread!

It took a long time to get a proper diagnosis after being misdiagnosed. Not that getting a label helps much....

There is no real treatment since meds don't work for me. CBT was a little help but far from a cure.

((((((((((( Thirty shades )))))))))))

meds...

labels...

Yes. So much so that after a few years, you end up with 5 different diagnosis.

grrrrrrrrr

hugs to you

Sarcastically, I sometimes feel like telling them that I have everything in the DSM. Just treat me with respect and we will be fine. Show me a list of treatments, and I will pick one. Same difference, sometimes. Hee hee.

Respect is what we need and deserve

Picking our own treatment from a list sounds like a good idea

some claim to be so sure they ''understand'' us when their ''understanding'' is completely wrong.

I've seen a lot of strange diagnoses which made me realise how little knowlegde some mental health professionals have about certain problems.

I've seen people...
With PTSD having a borderline diagnose.
Who dealt with aggressive/rejecting behavior with a diagnose depression.
Who dealt with manipulative, abusive behavior having a diagnose autism, depression, anxiety disorder and being recommended to eat more of specific kinds of food.
Who had a narcissistic partner being diagnosed as narcissistic (possibly because of the projections that were seen as well thought feedback).

I think arrogance can sometimes also contribute to people making wrong diagnoses, possibly thinking because of their knowlegde, that they don't need much feedback from the person they are helping.
People who gave me suitable support were often people who listened well, thought about what I was saying and asked questions before creating conclusions, the conclusions were then used for further understanding in a way that what I thought about things contributed to a better understanding both for me and the person that was supporting me.

Good post, thanks for sharing this.

Arrogance can be an.. issue.. I agree

Misdiagnosis of ''borderline'' is very common.

''possibly because of the projections that were seen as well thought out feedback''.

A totally, completely awesome thread. Thanks, Fuzzy!!

I say this because I believe it is a huge problem in the mental health world. For example, just in the last few years, a number of studies have come out suggesting that bipolar disorder may be overdiagnosed. In the best of these studies (Zimmerman), it was found that around 50% of bipolar 1 diagnoses made in the study were incorrect, based on the DSM 5 criteria. Long story. But I don't doubt it.

My initial diagnosis was major depressive disorder. But nobody ever asked me about manic or mixed or psychotic symptoms--never. Or drugs and alcohol. Had they done that initially, I could have possibly prevented the catastrophe that led finally to my bp1 diagnosis. Maybe not, but it's a possibility.

The human toll of misdiagnosis is almost incalculable. Wrong dx means wrong treatment and probably wrong meds. Wrong everything. What a nightmare.

Psychiatry is the only specialty in medicine that does not rely at least in part on laboratory tests (blood, CSF, stool, lymph, marrow) and/or imaging studies to arrive at its diagnoses. Research is being done, but until we can look at an fMRI and say--aha--schizoaffective disorder!--well then, I believe we are going to be behind the 8ball.

All of which explains why it is so very critical to get the absolute best team you can find and afford to care for you. Smart, talented, well-trained people are probably more accurate than average people. Are more aware of the current literature and potential pitfalls. And they may be, therefore, more likely to keep us out of trouble. So, get some good ones.

In the mean time, we need to do what we are doing. Advocate for ourselves and support each other. At this point, in some ways, that's the best thing we have going for us.

I might say that my current pdoc diagnosed me too quickly. I believe she dx'ed me as having bipolar disorder at the start of our second appointment. Awfully fast. The only reason I wasn't too surprised is because I'd been dx'ed with BD for so many years prior.

Many, many years ago a male psychologist diagnosed me as having BPD. I was very upset, especially because the symptoms didn't fit for me. The so-called "BPD" turned out to be CPTSD and of course, bipolar disorder.

Two personal instances and one I've read about:

(1) In college, I went to a psychiatrist at the student health center. (My parents were all ca-ca-pants about him because he'd treated the football team's quarterback for performance anxiety! ) It took him sixty seconds to run down a laundry list of symptoms. The ONLY thing that stopped him from diagnosing bipolar ("manic-depression" back then) was that I had no sleep problems.

(2) A musician friend of mine was "diagnosed" as bipolar in even less time -- his psychiatrist just arrogantly assumed that all artists were.

(3) I understand some HMO's expect their shrinks to diagnose via "decision trees." These look like computer flowcharts, with only yes-or-no questions re symptoms. The doc is to arrive at a diagnosis in no more than fifteen minutes, and he/she is penalized for taking longer!

yes well.... yes..