Quote:
Originally Posted by tecomsin
I know that the standard answer is that a person can have more than one diagnosed mental illness due to meeting the criteria for each one, specifically.
But if you think holistically about a person and their mind, there seems to be just a niggling of a problem.
For instance,
I have been diagnosed at times of having GAD but I really do think my tendency to anxiety is part and parcel of my bipolar or sza, whichever it is. It's one way my illness can interfere in normal life.
I am also paranoid sometimes but not enough to meet a diagnostic criteria for another mental illness so my paranoia is just lumped in with being a symptom of bipolar.
To me the distinction between labelling anxiety as . a separate illness and not labelling paranoia as one is pretty arbitrary.
That's why I think it is just one mental illness that I have.
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Yes, I believe so. I have the bipolar, but it didn't fully manifest until my mid-20s. Before that, I had severe anorexia (the type you see the horrible pictures of), and it is definitely a place no one wants to go, one of the worst ways to live and waste your life, you think about nothing but food, calories, exercise, clothes sizes, bones, your weight, restricting food, that you are fat, how much you weigh, scales, which scales are most accurate, etc., etc., etc. probably 95% of the time. I'd walk a grocery store for over an hour just looking at the food and leave maybe after purchasing some apples. I hoarded food under my bed (not that I ever ate it). I had weird eating rituals. It is pretty much a lifestyle when you get that absorbed in it. I even dreamed about eating things like chocolate cake slathered with icing or a whole bag of M&Ms and each time woke up feeling like i had to either try to throw it up (which I sucked at and did not go the bulimic route) or do an aerobics tape at 2 AM in the morning.
Anxiety and panic may tie in with bipolar, even the ED if you think holistically, but I think they are separate things, as is PTSD (so many back flashbacks and such different causes).
But I do think all disorders can be hit at once like by stress, a medical emergency, alcohol, meds, etc.