I totally hear you on this, bpyclist! I'm sorry that you didn't get a more conscientious/careful doctor until late in the game. I experienced very similar, though not with any long-term psychiatrist. My experiences were more the stereotypical GP appointments when I was only depressed. As predicted, they prescribed ADs that I only took for a couple days to a couple weeks, max, then switched moods. I lost a lot, too. It is horrible when you have a career that had great potential, and then you find yourself disabled. "BirdDancer, Director of Communications?" Didn't make it to that.

I was sort of lucky that once I finally made it to seeing a psychiatrist, long-term, that they did get it right after about 3 or 4 weeks. The quickness was probably because he also led group therapy that he forced me to attend. He saw the switch, himself. He told me I had "manic depression" and that I should take a moodstabilizer. I basically told him off and didn't return for a year, at which time I was hospitalized. I don't hold anything against him.

Before the above-mentioned pdoc, other than GPs that got it wrong, I saw a university psychiatrist one-time only, who got it wrong after seeing me for only 10 mins max with no future appointment, and just a prescription for Prozac, that I took maybe once or twice. The next pdoc was in a hospital in Taiwan. I was taken there in a severe pure depressive state. Again, he assumed depression and sent me back to my apartment with bags and bags of who knows what (surely at least one AD and probably supplements). Never saw him again, either. I got manic quickly, quit my job and started traveling in Hong Kong and Thailand. Major story about that experience!

After my first hospitalization and a six-month PHP/IOP, I went to a really cold fish of a psychiatrist. Not helpful! I ended up hospitalized soon after. When I attempted to return to him and my designated therapist, I found that they refused my return because I wanted to quit the PHP prematurely, and...something I'd rather not mention. After that, I was forced back to the PHP, then sent back inpatient. Then after the PHP/IOP again, I got my current private psychiatrist of over 14 years, whom I adore. Coincidentally, he was the psychiatrist I had during my first psych hospitalization. Regardless, I was still hospitalized many times, and though the hospital pdocs did confirm, over and over, my bipolar 1 diagnosis, they couldn't stop the kindling effect. They gave me unhelpful medication cocktails. Plus, I was a lousy therapy client. That didn't help. Eventually, my current pdoc did work out a fairly good med cocktail for me.