From my experience with private psychiatrists (and even some psychologists) is that though they may take a previous diagnosis into consideration, they actually like to come up with your diagnosis themselves. It happened that in all such cases with me that all of the psychiatrists came up with the same diagnosis - bipolar type 1. The "features" of my bipolar 1 often changed with episodes. Sometimes I had typical bipolar 1 without psychosis. Sometimes with psychosis (typical or mixed), sometimes without psychosis mixed, etc. I just say I have bipolar type 1.

The key when getting a second opinion is to really want a correct answer. That means please do not omit or exaggerate details. From my experience, I think a really careful out-patient private psychiatrist should take at least 2-3, 50 or 60 min sessions to come up with their final diagnosis. I think it really takes that long to hear and consider a patient's whole entire story. Hospital pdocs have the advantage of observing and receiving observations for days, but even they should ask some key questions beyond what is "seen" during a hospitalization.