I'm one of those persons who have known they have it, been diagnoised and lived in denial about having it. I'm not sure how all docs handle it but I wish my first pdoc would have told me that if I pretend to ignore this my life had a very high probability of ending up screwed up by me. I'm not blaming him, but I just wish he would have come clean to me about how bad it can get. Pdoc's get into their own personal feelings about and beliefs about bipolar and it's VERY hard to find anything consistent between 1 doc and the next. I'm confused enough without their help. I'll probably end up sounding like a broken record on this site but when I read Fieve's book on bp2, it sounded like it was a script of my life. I don't know if Bipolar in and of itself is being over diagnosed or just the spectrum of MOOD disorders is being more understood. Where was this information when I really needed it. I would at least liked the chance to turn it down.