Trust that diagnosis?

The Myth of Mental Health Diagnosis | Psychology Today

When I was in the hospital most often I got the diagnosis of depression, no matter how much I tried to tell people my main symptom was anxiety.

I think it's very common to have both major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

If you get diagnosed with those -- does it help you to understand yourself or get real help?

I think the diagnosis helps as far as medication is concerned.

As far as the other part (reframing thought patterns and behavior) I don't think the diagnosis is all that helpful.

Most anti-depressants also help with anxiety, so I think the diagnosis of major depressive disorder helped me get the right medication.

I never found that any medications helped at all. For me, the only thing that has helped is insight, and that I have had to develop almost entirely on my own (with reading, etc.).

I'm sorry meds didn't help you.

For me, medications and support groups help. Therapy never really did.

The main problem was that the providers did not listen when told that. After all, they were the experts and what does a mental patient know anyway? You can't trust what they say...

Trouble I find is -- what is "therapy"? The word itself tells you very little. So something that is called "therapy" can be almost anything. Tell me what actually happens in a therapy session! Does the therapist listen to what you have to say, and occasionally ask a question so that they can further understand what you are saying?

Or do you say something and the therapist says something and...

Yes, a lot of doctors don't listen. I've had to switch many times. It's frustrating trying to advocate for yourself when you're depressed.

And it seems like good therapists are few and far between. A lot do more harm than good.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pachyderm If you get diagnosed with those -- does it help you to understand yourself or get real help?

Problem is that the real underlying reasons for these diagnosis are usually so deeply hidden within the person that real help seems to seldom be found. Dealing with symptoms in no way solves the real cause.

In my case, meds did not solve the underlying cause of the depression or anxiety, thus no help but major side effects that actually made my situation worse not better either.

Finally left that environment & depression didn't follow (clue #1 for me) then I found therapy that helped me process all the crap that seemed to have caused the depression I had experienced.
Connecting the dots & doing the work with the guiding ear of my wonderful T really helped me heal

The same with me pachyderm. I had a friend that wrote a book that once told me that insight cured all, but you have to have a certain level of intelligence though. Anyhow that is what he said.

I think finding insight on your own can be difficult. It has taken me many years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by downandlonely I think finding insight on your own can be difficult. It has taken me many years.

It took me many years too but I have to say it was nice to have a good T to talk through my insight with. We discussed & tweeked some of the insights to be more accurate

I agree that a good therapist would be helpful.

It took years to figure out what was going on with me. Prior to that I had a long list of diagnoses. Almost all of them didn't make much sense. They did a very poor job at describing my situation and feelings. It was frustrating and traumatizing.

I remember trying to explain why I did not have a particular diagnosis. No one listened. They just accused me of being in denial. Eventually I gave up and left psychiatry. Stopping medications and leaving the service stabilized me and saved my life. They were killing me.

Eventually I found me "diagnosis" via the internet. All it took was contacting an old psychiatrist who I had good rapport with previously to get an assessment.

-- That lady lead me on the path of recovery.

So many psychiatrists wrote that I had a very poor prognosis and would probably amount to nothing. I now work full-time and live a stable life.

Trust that diagnosis? Not if it doesn't make sense.

Interesting excerpt. Also I read the linked article. I agree with it.

I got diagnosed as having "major depressive disorder with anxiety." I always felt anxiety was the bigger issue. I think, for me, depression was a way of retreating from anxiety. But, yes, clinicians tended to focus on the depression. With one exception, nothing they ordered - drugwise - helped. Therapy never helped either, and I did it to death, for years and years.

Focusing on the anxiety, what helped was me pushing my way through situations that made me anxious and just facing them. Basically, I had social anxiety - which no one ever diagnosed me with. I would make myself do things I didn't want to do, but felt I wanted to prove to myself I could do them. I would say to myself, "This isn't going to kill you . . . or even hurt you. So just grab the bull by the horns."

I was sensitive and would feel very bad, if I thought I had badly handled myself in a situation amongst other people. Then I would tell myself, "Look I didn't kill anyone, or even harm anyone. Maybe others think I'm weird. Okay, so I'm weird. They'll get over it. I'll move on to the next thing."

I guess - in therapy - you're supposed to gain some big insight that changes how you look at things, and you're then liberated in some way. That never happened to me in any therapist's office. Life experience has given me some hard won insights. Usually that involved some emotional pain. There's dues to pay for everything in life - I believe.

That whole DSM taxonomy has been losing credibility in recent years. It's useful to me to realize that I experience anxiety and that I'm prone to becoming depressed. I like being able to name things. I never believed in the "chemical imbalance" theory, which is also getting thrown out the window, from what I read.

I think "bipolar disorder" is a crock of baloney and doesn't exist. Obviously, some people have striking mood changes. That's an observable reality. But to say that a person has mood fluctuations because they have "fluctuating mood disorder" is a tautology. It's circular thinking. It yields no insight.

Another disorder that I think has become a crock of baloney is PTSD, which now everyone and his dog qualifies for. Anyone born into this world is destined to go through some pretty miserable experiences. That's life. If everyone has PTSD, then it's just part of being human and not a disorder. I do believe in PTSD, as an infrequent disorder that represents someone who is severely stressed by an unusual calamitous experience. It's strange how so few WW2 vets that were POWs claim to have PTSD, but now the incidence has skyrocketed. I know a vet (close relative) who claims to be severely traumatized by the "survivor's guilt" he feels over never having been in combat. Yeah, everyone ones to get on the bandwagon.

25 years ago, dissociative disorder was trending (in the USA.) Suddenly lots of people had multiple personality disorder. Doctors in the UK called it "The American Disease" because it became an epidemic here, but not in Britain.

I think personality disorders are under-diagnosed because being labeled "Axis 2" is taken as an insult. One therapist told me it just means the clinician doesn't like the patient.

What matters is what is missing in a person's life and how does the person go about remedying that deficit.

@Rose76 I think you handled your anxiety well and I'm sorry therapists didn't help with it.
Therapists never helped me much either. I prefer peer support groups with people who have similar experiences.

As far as PTSD, I believe it is common for people who have suffered sexual abuse and childhood trauma.

I think most PDs are really highly sensitive people who have been constantly invalidated while growing up and have developed certain personality traits to cope.

The only two PDs that make clinical sense to me are schizoid and schizotypal.

I strongly doubt that many people really gain transformative insight from meeting once a week for 45 minutes with an MSW. When I hear people say that going to a therapist was very helpful, I don't think "insight" was really what they got out of it. I think what they got was "affirmation." I believe that, when people go to therapists, what they really want is to be comforted in some way. If the therapist delivers that in some way, the client feels gratified. Maybe the client had a painful childhood with a parent who was very critical. They would like to receive the validation that they never got in their childhood home. If the therapist tells them they didn't deserve all that parental criticism, the client feels defended against the psychological bullying they were subjected to by the parent. I wouldn't call that insight. The client is still yearning for external validation.

I believe that adult unhappiness is mainly caused by having an approach to life that is not working very well. The last thing most people want to be told is that their approach to life is seriously flawed. They're all ears when a therapist tells them that the way they were parented was flawed. People want to hear how someone failed them. "It's not your fault." seems to be the holy grail that therapy clients are seeking. I think the important insights are when we can critique ourselves and not have our self-esteem collapse. No one can change how they were parented. With insight, maybe I can change how I'm approaching life.

I was in a partial hospitalization program where my peers helped me a lot in that regard. I wasn't getting along well with the staff. My peers advised me that I was alienating staff by challenging a lot of what they said. They advised me that I needed to just shut up more. That was hard for me to hear, but they gave that feedback in a way that was not without compassion. They advised, "Take what you value, and leave what you don't." They even validated that staff was kind of picking on me. "But," they said, "you bring that on yourself, by how contrary you are towards them." That gave me real food for thought. I adopted a different demeanor. My peers even pointed out to staff how I was trying to be a better listener and less argumentative.

I do think "peer support" can be very potent. There aren't a lot of venues where you can find that.

I actually use a website for peer support. Lots of virtual meetings available. Some are free, and all are cheaper than therapy.

When I saw therapists, all they did was validate me. That meant I thought I didn't have to change, so I didn't. Actually the 12 steps helped me own my part and make positive changes.

The T I had was a PhD & she was a very knowing kind of T. It was all about learning skills to replace the ones that didn't work for me which was all about my changing the skills that didn't
work & strengthen the ones that did & fine tune them to work better. Seriously loved her technique. Worked perfect for me because it was also based on intellectual understanding of how the brain works. Felt like I was back in college learning again & that worked very well for me. The good thing is that she is able to relate to the needs of the person to get them to understand but also learn to do the work necessary to get better. When I first came to the private T I had, she admitted when she retired that she didn't think she could get through to me but at the end she was amazed that I was really recovering when she handed me off to the absolutely best T ever. Both were PhD & both had skills I had never experienced in therapy before