Hi! I'm new here, but an old hand at living with mental illness. I was diagnosed with MDD a year or two after I started primary school and had to spend time in psychiatric wards on several occasions during my childhood. I didn't question my diagnosis for a long time, but a couple of years ago I started to wonder if I was bipolar instead. I can recall numerous periods of elevated mood, activity and ambition that began occurring in my early teen years and have persisted to this day. I think I'm going through one now.

I let the idea sit in the back of my mind until a year ago, when my condition got unbearably bad and I had to seek professional help. I met with apsychiatrist primarily because of severe suicidal ideation, but I also wanted to talk about the possible bipolar disorder. Unfortunately the pdoc didn't seem very interested in my ideas and simply put me on an SSRI and prescribed a low dose of quetiapine to be taken PRN. I was assigned a psychiatric nurse whom I saw every other week so that they could keep track of my condition.

I didn't like the nurse. He seemed very cold and uninterested in what I had to say. I kept trying to bring up BP and he kept completely ignoring me. I cried after most visits. This went on for months, until I just stopped going. I also stopped taking the meds, since I felt like they weren't helping. I quit school (for the third time in five years) because at this point I had been to barely any classes for six months. Not a big loss since I wasn't cut out for marketing, I felt like it was killing my soul, figuratively speaking. Roughly three months later I met with a very nice nurse who arranged for me to get a new psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse.

My new pdoc and nurse seemed much better than the previous pair. They actually took my BP theory seriously and after a few visits the pdoc told me it had probably been a good idea to stop taking the SSRI. I was assigned a psychologist whom I met twice a week for a month to receive extensive psychological and cognitive testing. The tests are now done and in a couple of weeks at most I will meet with my pdoc, nurse and psychologist to receive a full diagnosis and discuss treatment. I predict it will be something on the bipolar spectrum, generalized anxiety disorder and avoidant personality disorder. Whatever they tell me, I'm sure it'll be a load off my mind.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting this, it's almost noon here and I haven't slept yet... I guess I just wanted to say hi and share a bit. Sorry for the rambling and any abuse of the English language I might have inadvertently committed.

From Finland with love.