When I was considered high functioning I was always treated with respect and appropriate responses were always taken when I was not feeling well. My psychiatrist used to tell me that for the severity of my illness I was the highest functioning patient she had ever seen. But that meant that she reacted quickly if I felt I needed her to in order to try to maintain that level of function. Same with my therapist.

If you aren't getting an appropriate response from your treatment providers because they think you are too high functioning you need another provider.

I wasn't diagnosed until I figured it out for myself and got myself into a specialized mood disorder clinic because I had a pdoc for at least a year who thought that if I had a master's degree and worked in health care it was impossible for me to be bipolar. So I would tell her how awful I was doing and she would document that I was doing extremely well and was just mildly depressed or a bit anxious. In the meantime I was coming home from work and jumping straight into bed in my filthy scrubs and eating only canned ravioli because I wasn't well enough to cook. It was a really bad situation and I am so glad I gave up on her and wish I had done so sooner. Ironically it was her putting me on lithium to help decrease suicidal thoughts that led to my mood swings being much more obvious and my realization that I needed to be evaluated for bipolar.

I will add that sometimes when someone talks about long-term disability it may be part of an adjustment period that you don't know about. It's hard for me to see a future working because I'm having to give up my professional license because I'm too ill to maintain it. Adjusting to that HURTS and makes me unable to picture working. But it is possible that some med might someday make some other kind of work possible. However, right now I am grieving and it feels like it is all over. And that's ok for me to feel because it is a huge loss to know that I am absolutely done forever doing something I loved with all my being. It's impossible to know what someone is exactly referring to or dealing with inside.