I know the topic is a passionate one for some in this community, and I’m hesitant to speak on it but at the end of the day – this forum is about seeking support and having an open dialogue (or at least I hope that’s how others see it too) and I’m hoping I can benefit and maybe some others can too. The topic at hand is about co-morbidity with bipolar disorder and with a lot of general overlap in mental illness, have you had any issues that I’ve experienced in my journey with mental health. As I said, I know some people in this community are very staunchly support the idea that while some overlap in mental illness criteria and symptoms can be seen – X is not a symptom in Y and therefore X cannot be Y or vice versa. To be clear, I’m not looking to debate that idea. As complex beings many of us may have been diagnosed with multiple disorders, in which one may exacerbate the other, or perhaps the opposite is true, we are diagnosed with multiple disorders because of the idea that X can’t fit into Y… -- all in all, I don’t think there is much benefit in arguing that topic here, I want to start with my experience with co-morbidity and some other interesting things I’ve experienced, and then I want to open it up to see your experience. I just want to be clear first and foremost what my intent is.

For me and my experience – a label for it does make me feel at least I’m not alone and I have something to sum it up a little simpler than just being a sum of symptoms or experiences. I know there are many who don’t like labels and I understand and respect that point of view as well (things are misunderstood, not everything fits every person etc) , but for me – I feel better just having a name for it and knowing where to look for others who may suffer the same. I bring that up just so you understand why I’m eye some of these terms and ideas that have come about. They’re not so important on some levels, but on some I hold them with importance. It’s a weird situation, lol. I don’t guess it has to make rational sense, but it’s just where I am.

So, my mental health journey encompasses a lot of childhood traumas and issues there – I didn’t reach out for help until I was 23. I was diagnosed then with dysthymia and major depression with generalized anxiety disorder. After a few years my therapist came to the conclusion he feels I am bipolar. Most psychiatrists I have had haven’t been too concerned with figuring it out as much as just trying or tweaking a medication and seeing what happens. However I did have one psychiatrist kind of oddly after our initial assessment claim a differential diagnosis of a personality disorder (NOS). I remember talking to my therapist about it and he explained there could be a much simpler reason for it than honestly concluding it’s a major possibility. He mentioned how billing of insurances sometimes require some excessive stuff or perhaps it was just trying to be thorough and not ruling out something until enough evidence was there to support it. He also mentioned personality disorders are very much stigmatized because they are hard to treat and therefore he’d rather not see that label put on me in the event I would have to see another therapist/psychiatrist – in his experience. I trusted my therapist very much and he was speaking candidly, I trust his knowledge in the matter. He told me he didn’t feel I had a personality disorder at the time. This was a few years ago, maybe 5. Also as early as last year I randomly got pegged with PTSD, which I have my own qualms about, but anyway.

All of that said, why bring that up now? Well, I realize not everything comes down to being a psychiatric disorder, especially when we start talking about lifestyle, but there are a lot of habits and ingrained feelings that I guess come from my upbringing and could be kind of explained away by that – color it with mental illness and maybe that’s the result, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. In concrete terms, I isolate a lot. I don’t have or keep friends, and those who I do we usually fall out at some point. Even before the pandemic, even when I was independent, even since I was a kid -- I’ve kept to myself. I don’t leave the house often and it’s more or less when I’m forced to. On any given day the amount of text messages I will receive will be 0-2, a high probability one is my mother, and my phone doesn’t ring. I just don’t connect with the outside world. I don’t use a lot of social media (I technically have a facebook but I don’t have friends or use it. I have utilized messenger some). For the most part I do feel OK because this is my normal. This is me. I engross myself whatever thing I find fitting at the time – a videogame, politics, learning something (languages especially), religion… just depends. I have some high levels of social anxiety and in general I’d rather be closed off from the world than deal with the people in it.

None of that is for me to suggest I have a personality disorder and I’m not asking you to try to diagnose me either lol. My point in that is, none of that is inherently a bipolar feature. It may overlap with another disorder, or maybe it’s just the lens in which my world manifests and bipolar plays its own role. It’s complicated lol. I don’t pretend I understand assessment and diagnostic principles of mental illness enough to know how to read into it. If a DSM checklist was all we needed, we wouldn’t need professionals – I’ll leave it to them lol.

So, with all that said I want to sum up what I’m saying. The context of mental illness and symptoms you experience can augment (add) , change, or even remove certain diagnoses from the board in lieu of a better fitting set of symptoms under X name. I don’t have any research on the topic off hand, but the idea of a personality disorder and a mood disorder being comorbid is a researched concept so it happens enough to warrant that. Just curious how many of you here have has multiple diagnoses, especially a more pervasive pattern type such a personality disorder? Do you think the diagnoses better reflect the experiences you have?
So, my questions are:

1) Do you have any co-morbid mental illness diagnoses with bipolar disorder?

2) In your opinion, does having the multiple diagnoses better help you understand or explain your set of issues and experience?


3) Just curious – is having a label important to you? I’m curious your perspective. As far as treatment goes – I’m definitely a “whatever works, works.” – to hell with whatever label you wanna give it. However, as far as feeling a sense of being understood and belonging, I do like having a label to help guide that discussion, but that is just my personal opinion.

Thanks for reading. It’s early in the morning here and I don’t think my thoughts are super clear or concise, but I hope you get the gist of what I’m asking and I’m looking forward to reading your responses. Also, if this topic gets quickly buried with no responses, I’ll take the hint this time around. Haha. I’ll try to limit my posts when I get into an insightful mood. Lol

[P.S. I am posting this in the bipolar forum. I feel it is pertinent since I’m specifically asking about bipolar disorder + other mental illness diagnoses. I ask that it does not get removed from this board. Thank you.]