I’m new here and just trying to see if anyone can relate. My newest psychiatrist was trying to sort out what type of bipolar I might have (maybe something between BP2 and cyclothymia?). Now it she says it is PTSD related bipolar. In the simplest form I can explain is when I try an antidepressant, I usually get hypomanic like symptoms (feeling high but agitated at the same time, very hard to describe). I always deal with depression and bad anxiety while off meds. I have been taking fluvoxamine and Seroquel for a close to a year and at one point and it helped a lot with my anxiety which was great.

Now I don’t feel like it’s doing much and I asked the doctor about going back to the beginning of all the meds I tried, and see how it goes with Seroquel and mood stabilizer. I mentioned trying Depakote and she says that ‘it requires to much blood work’. I was on a high dose of Lamictal but not on a SSRI so, wanted to try that. (That DR said it would have made the ‘high’ go away and the SSRI work like it should) She said no. lol. And this is the part that doesn’t make any sense. Have been taking 200mg of Seroquel for quite a while and was given 150mg XR to start on supposedly to work my way up to 300mg.

Told her I have been on 300mg XR before and she didn’t seem to care. So, I was given 150mg XR (30-day supply, but I guess forgot about the part of where I was supposed to take 1 a day for 7 days then take 2 I guess to equal the 300mg. (She said it had something to due with insurance reasons but idk). So, she could of literally just gave me 300mg XR and things would have been fine.
So much ******** to go through for nothing.

The thing that pisses me off is, even if I don’t have a 100% diagnosis of bipolar 2 or something close to that, why not just try and treat me like that, and see how If I have a positive reaction to it? If it doesn’t work then go off it and try a different combo. This was through tele-medicine as well because of where I live. Maybe Not all psychiatrist truly cares about how you are doing, or just to lazy to manage meds?

So, has anyone here with PTSD or not been told it was the major cause of there bipolar? Are you being treated with meds? I was basically told therapy would solve it and stay on Seroquel. Makes me wonder if the Psych Drs you pay cash up front would make a big difference. Sorry if this came out to a long rant as well.