My Support Forums - View Single Post - Bipolar Check-in #87

Blueberrybook · Mar 10, 2025, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue_Bird

I think polypharmacy is too common. Also a lot of times diagnosing isn’t done thoroughly enough. I have been in mental health care since I was 14 years old and not once even despite knowing how I grew up did anyone ever mention the possibility of PTSD and I brought it up to my psychiatrist last week, now at 30 years old almost 31, and he was like yeah that makes a lot of sense and also explains why we have more difficulty than usual controlling my other symptoms with meds and he diagnosed it. And my therapist started EMDR with me several months ago and immediately asked about trauma when we started working together. I swear some doctors just slap the first diagnosis that comes to mind and don’t investigate further. Like sometimes there’s additional stuff going on that could be contributing to difficulties. Meds can’t solve everything. Therapy is important too

You are right about the polypharmacy; I am definitely a victim of that as well as not being thoroughly diagnosed. I was treated for major depression through my 20s (though taken off meds during my pregnancy, which ended just before I turned 29). I saw doctor after doctor who just took the previous doctor's diagnosis and ran with it and never bother to re-assess the previous diagnosis. When my daughter was 6 weeks old, I went back to the psychiatrist, this time finally on private insurance. At first I was just diagnosed with postpartum depression until 8 months later I showed up in a full-blown manic state for an appt., which got me reclassified as bipolar I. After she retired, I got the medical records from my old pdoc; she was already questioning if I was bipolar by my 2nd appt. with her and had noted that she would re-assess in the future and it looked like she was going to reclassify me with bipolar II at the 9 month mark when I showed up super manic for an appt. and she decided that it had to be bipolar I. But she was the exception. No other pdoc I'd had before her had probed as deeply as she did, and she had a way with her that was very personal yet I felt was nonjudmental as well, kind of like "I have heard it all, whatever you tell me will not shock me" so that I felt safe in telling her things I was too embarrassed to tell pdocs before her. I was very lucky to have found her; she was beyond exceptional.

My point though is I think all those years of being treated with SSRIs instead of meds for bipolar did nothing but worsen my bipolar. The bad thing about the pdoc who classified my bipolar is that she was old school and got me on benzos and getting off benzos is pretty much what has me on polypharmacy now...sigh.