good way to describe negative symptoms

hi everyone,

i just wanted to share this, in case anyone else has the same problem

I always meet doctors or other people, who think i must be depressed because of my negative symptoms: you know, the low energy,social withdrawl, low motivation, little or no interest in usual activities or life, etc.

I was in the hospital again about 4 weeks ago because of a psychotic episode. I was not depressed and i havn't been for almost two years, but i think i appeared depressed because of my negative symptoms. The doctor i was assigned while i was in the hospital, wouldn't get off the subject and idea that he thought i was either depressed or bipolar, even though i kept repeating to him that i have not had mood problems for a long time. I told him that my mood is mostly flat and i am indifferent. It was quite frusterating, especially concidering the fact that he only evaluated me for about 10 or 15 minutes, didn;t ask me many questions, and didn't even seem to concider that i had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, yet he felt he had the right to give me a diagnosis of his own.

Anyways, after i made it really clear to him that i was getting frusterated and that i was not depressed or manic, he finally chose to say, that he thinks i have schizoaffective: depressed type (which i dont know if i agree with)

anyways...i've rambled again. From now on, whenever i go to a doctor or have to describe these negative symptoms, i'm going to put it like this:
"It's like having all (or most) of the symptoms of depression, minus the actual depressed feelings. My mood is mostly flat"

-becka

I know what you mean! I hate it when they walk in like they know everything, makes you want to beat them with their friggin' clip boards eh?

Doctors with a good knowledge of schizophrenia are pretty rare, aren't they? How many have done the same thing as the stupid one in the hospital you had to see? Do you have a T who actually has a clue?

Ehh. Things can be darn crappy sometimes, huh?

yep! i;ve gotten very fed up with all these doctors over the years. I've been to about 15 different ones, almost all of them didn't really know what they were doing.
, it sure does seem to me like the good ones are rare. I've only met one so far that seemed to know what he was talking about (he was the one who actually did a thorough evaluation on me and then diagnosed me with paranoid schizophrenia. I've been to many doctors, and almost al of theml seemed to be more ignorant than anything else.
I've been to a lot of T's too. I dont have one right now, but i am trying to find a good one...dont know if that will ever be possible.
a few months before i was diagnosed with schiz, i was seeing this one T, and i mentioned to her that i though i might have schizophrenia or maybe schizoaffective disorder. She looked at me and said
"Trust me, my brother is schizophrenic. If you had schizophrenia, your speech would be very hard to understand, so you dont have to worry"
...Well, of coarse at the time, i thought that sounded fishy, and sure enough the more research i did on schiz, i soon found out that if i had disorganized schizophrenia, then my speech might be hard to understand, but the other types of schiz dont usually include disorganized speech. ha! she didn't have a clue what she was talking about, and just confused me even more for quite a while.
She turned out to be a bad therapist for many other reasons as well.

-becka

Ugh. I totally feel ya on those kind of psychiatrists...they are so quick to judge and diagnose people with things. They are flippin' pill pushers too! I have Major Depressive Disorder (I'm 18), and I was diagnosed when I was 15. They started shoving antidepressants down my throat, when they haven't even been approved for kids/teens yet! Boo! Good luck though, m'dear.

-Carolyn.

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