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Originally Posted by whoswho
I remember seeing my first psychiatrist when I was 12 years old. Obviously, I was quite young and children are rarely diagnosed with severe mental illness at that age. But I think it was really my psychiatrist who had more problems than myself. So here I am, suicidal, cutting myself, my mom desperately bringing me in so as to avoid an inpatient hospital stay. My first visit I was diagnosed as Bipolar simply based on the fact that I was cutting. I returned the next week and the first question the psychaitrist asked was, of course, "have you hurt yourself?" "No," I replied. She proceeded to do a skin check anyway, and what do you know, I was actually telling the truth. She looks at my mom in disbelief. "She does not have Bipolar," she says. "The fact that she stopped cutting and has impulse control shows that she is doing this for attention." Yes, obviously, it was all for attention... It most certainly wasn't due to the fact that I felt so terrible when my mom found me cutting, and the sadness and harm I caused her, that I stopped for a very brief amount of time. No, nothing like that at all... That was when I flushed my Prozac down the toilet and decided I would just pretend that never happened... Didn't work out so well.
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Your situation is similar to mine. I was 15 when I first saw a psychiatrist who inevitably told me that I had nothing wrong with me and that I was making myself depressed and cutting for attention. A few months later I end up in the psych unit for attempting suicide, and a different psychiatrist was torn as to what I should be "labeled" due to my past encounter with the world's worst psychiatrist ever. So he decides that I'm dealing with depression and sends me on my merry way (after a month) with some bupropion. I keep taking it throughout high school, but it didn't help with my hypomania which I didn't fully realize was something to be concerned with because I had never heard of Bipolar II. In college, I decided that since nothing was really "wrong" with me I'd stop taking the medication...bad idea. I ended up in the psych unit again with the nurses telling the psychiatrist that I was not complying with what they had asked me to do, etc. Bull crap! Anyone that knows me fully would know that I have an obsessive need to have others like me, therefore, I will do pretty much anything asked of me due to the fact that I don't want to disappoint them. I digress... Anyway, most recently (about a year ago) I again attempted suicide (while I was at work) and was rushed to the ER. I was admitted and was FINALLY properly diagnosed with Bipolar II after going though my history and documenting, documenting, documenting. At least now I have a competent psychiatrist who has prescribed me the right types of medication and I can start to feel "normal" again. I don't like that word "normal" due to the fact that none of us are ever normal...oh, well. Basically, I relate!