[Bipolarchic14]

I am hospitalized this summer for strong suicidal urges. While there, they tell me they don’t know if I’m bipolar but I might just be suffering from a strong case of PTSD from childhood trauma. Not married to the disorder so I’m like that’s fine this would explain why I’m still feeling like crap. So do they prescribe other treatments?No. instead they give me some kind of weird meditation to do. So I ultimately decided my medication isn’t working, they diagnosed me wrong and I get off of it. Now my therapist has been nagging me for last two months to get back on my medication. I go see my psychiatrist today and they’re like you’re in a mixed episode and it’s going to become a full-blown episode if you don’t get back on your medication. Well wtf Can They please make up their mind. why would I take medication for something I don’t have? It’s not like the medication isn’t harmful because it is and if I don’t have Bipolar disorder then it’s not going to work for me so why the heck do they keep putting me back on it. I go off the medication because they tell me I don’t have it and now they’re telling me I need to go back on my medication. I hate mental health professionals so much! Does anyone else have this issue? It’s like they are more focused on giving me a diagnosis than helping me. I don’t care what I have I just want to feel OK. God I hate people. I hope others are having a better day than I did. I’m just feeling so enraged right now like this is my life stop messing with me and just f*cking help me😡

[~Christina]

I’m sorry your getting mixed information and meds on and off.

Diagnosing BP is not something that is one size fits all.

It’s often trial and error when it comes to meds.

It can be difficult if it’s ptsd or BP ... but right now you should just focus on treating the symptoms that are making life so miserable.

So Pdoc start people on a medication to see if it helps. “ most “ psych meds take 6-8 weeks to see if they will truly help, if after a decent length of time it’s not helping we’ll them it’s time to
Try another. It can take a lot of time to find a medication that works and doesn’t have side effects.

Sometimes it can months to a year or more for a Pdoc to really watch for patterns and make a final diagnosis.

I think it really would benefit you to see a Therapist ... you need to process how your feeling, you can work on any traumas in your life. Trust me there is more coping skills to learn than meditation and a Therapist can help you learn them.

Focus on committing to a medication and learn coping skills and take a deep breath it takes time to sort everything out

[bpcyclist]

My first legit, full-on symptoms were when I was 17. My diagnosis was not officially made until I was 33. It can take awhile. Just hang in there. You can do this. Like Christina says, it can take awhile to get this all sorted for you. Just don't give up. You will feel better.

[sarahsweets]

Hey @Bipolarchic14

Originally Posted by Bipolarchic14

I am hospitalized this summer for strong suicidal urges. While there, they tell me they don’t know if I’m bipolar but I might just be suffering from a strong case of PTSD from childhood trauma. Not married to the disorder so I’m like that’s fine this would explain why I’m still feeling like crap. So do they prescribe other treatments?No. instead they give me some kind of weird meditation to do. So I ultimately decided my medication isn’t working, they diagnosed me wrong and I get off of it.

Did you mean to write meditation and medication? Did you mean you were already on medication and then they told you to meditate? Or was it a typo and you meant to say they gave you medication instead of another treatment and then medication?
Either way, what made you stop the medication? Was it because of side effects or that it didnt seem to be helping?

Now my therapist has been nagging me for last two months to get back on my medication. I go see my psychiatrist today and they’re like you’re in a mixed episode and it’s going to become a full-blown episode if you don’t get back on your medication.

What symptoms were you having that lead to your therapist and psyche to say you needed to go back on medication?

Well wtf Can They please make up their mind. why would I take medication for something I don’t have? It’s not like the medication isn’t harmful because it is and if I don’t have Bipolar disorder then it’s not going to work for me so why the heck do they keep putting me back on it.

I do not believe that just because you may not have bipolar that medication wouldnt work. There are plenty of people who take medication for things like ptsd. And you are right, the medication isnt without side effects but what if you were just to look at the symptoms instead of focusing on the label?
Did the medication help with anything at all?

I go off the medication because they tell me I don’t have it and now they’re telling me I need to go back on my medication. I hate mental health professionals so much! Does anyone else have this issue? It’s like they are more focused on giving me a diagnosis than helping me. I don’t care what I have I just want to feel OK. God I hate people. I hope others are having a better day than I did. I’m just feeling so enraged right now like this is my life stop messing with me and just f*cking help me😡

When you say you go off medication, does your treatment team tell you to do this? Or is this something you decide to do because of a diagnostic label? I ask because I would be surprised if they would tell you to go on and off your medication. The other thing is I do not know a single person with bipolar that hasnt decided or wondered if they should be on medication. I havent met a single person with bipolar including myself who hasnt decided without a doctor telling them, to go off medication. I personally believe its one of the tough things with bipolar- being med compliant and trusting doctors. Before I was compliant i would go back and forth about medicine too. And this was the 90's when there was no google and I was just winging it. Now with google I feel like more people decided to do what they want with medication because they googled something that told them it was safe. Are you having an episode?

[FluffyDinosaur]

Were the docs that told you to go off meds different from your usual pdoc and therapist? For what it's worth, I would personally give more weight to the opinion of my regular pdoc and therapist than to a different doc who I only see once or a few times while an inpatient, because I think they know me a lot better and are therefore in a better position to accurately diagnose me.

[Sometimes psychotic]

I remember asking my pdoc if I had schizophrenia pretty much right away because I was having psychosis he said he would not know unless he took me off meds which would be unethical. A couple years later I still had zero symptoms on meds so we followed some cutting edge no medication thing because people who went off meds supposedly had a better outcome. Now it was rare to be able to be off meds for more than a year something like 80% relapse for first episode psychosis. Still we thought I was doing so well perhaps I was one of the lucky 20%. Needless to say I was not. I pretty much have a bipolar diagnosis now from my initial episode and the the wisps of psychosis that started after 9 months off meds. Sometimes they don’t know until removing meds if you actually need them or not. In your case it seems to be the opposite of mine, where your symptoms were not being impacted by meds though.
I try to remember the reality of psychiatry....first none of the conditions are homogeneous...that is to say they are simply classified by symptoms and not a single gene of origin. So whether you have bipolar or not your bipolar will not be exactly like mine. They also have very few medicines to try...mood stabilizer, antipsychotic and antidepressants. Sure there are different ones in case you don’t like your current side effects but generally they are quite similar within the three classes with a few minor variations. Psychiatry is still in early days, it’s barely a medical science compared to other fields so I cut them some slack because they are still learning. They don’t even have reliable diagnostics....there is no test for bipolar. There is no one size fits all treatment so we are in essence a science experiment in the works.

I was planning on writing exactly what FluffyDinosaur wrote above.

Obviously we don't know all the details of your hospital visit, but I can say that sometimes (not always) psychiatrists at psych hospitals don't have the big picture to go on. Some only spend very limited time with the hospital patients, and only see one presentation/episode during a patient's stay. Also, sometimes what is said in the hospital consultations can be misleading if taken all alone. I mean, if I went to the hospital in a depressive episode and talked about a trauma, does that mean I don't have bipolar disorder then? Would that mean I only have PTSD, major depressive disorder, and/or something else other than bipolar disorder? Despite having had multiple manic episodes in the past?

I would certainly hope that the hospital psychiatrist had a long talk with your regular psychiatrist before issuing a diagnosis and overhauling your medications. However, I am quite sure that many simply don't. Have you asked your outpatient (regular) psychiatrist if he/she was consulted by the hospital psychiatrist?

Many hospital and IOP/PHP psychiatrists in the past have done me more harm than good because they never consulted with my outpatient psychiatrist.

Luckily, I have been with my outpatient (regular) psychiatrist for many years now. He has seen/observed, and heard everything from me. The disadvantage of only having a psychiatrist or therapist for a limited time, or during a period when the illness presents in a single way, is that it causes uncertainty about dx.

[bpcyclist]

During my longest hospitalization ever, the pdoc came into the room and announced that she didn't believe I had bipolar disorder. Was the first thing she said to me. Then, a few minutes later, she freely admitted to not having been through my old chart yet. She was wrong.

Enough said.

[Bipolarchic14]

@ Christina Ido see a therapist. She and I have been working on a lot of pressing current stuff. Eventually discussing childhood will probably be beneficial.

[Bipolarchic14]

@sarahsweets I discussed it with the outpatient program before I went off. On the medicine my blood sugar was over 400 and my suicidal urges intensified. (The high sugar and suicidal urges may be connected but not necessarily related. ). It was apparently helping manic like symptoms but not depression. They recommended meditation not medication but there is a story behind that. Started in iop and was moved to hospital. They did a meditation in iop that triggered me. So the hospital was teaching me a better way. It has been helpful. With the medication, I had been taking it for almost a decade so it is easy to forget some of the symptoms it did help. My sleep is irregular again some nights down to 1.5 hours, getting more rage but had issues with this even when on meds. The one med that helps with anger/anxiety, I actually never dropped.

[Bipolarchic14]

Fluffy dinosaur. Yes different doctors but in the same system/ management group. So when they told me.this I assumed it was based on my medical file.

[Nammu]

You might have both. PTSD can trigger the bipolar and the bipolar can mess up getting diganoised PTSD. It might be that the meds as imperfect as they were tamped enough bipolar symptoms to shine a light on the PTSD. There is hope tho, don't give up. I had both and was a mess until I got a handful of good coping strategies down. The problem with coping skills is that it takes persistent effort to results. The meds only do so much on there own but the bipolar part pretty much needs. It till the skills become learnt