Getting the right diagnosis

Hey everybody!

Over the 11 years that i've had my 'peculiar mental illness', I've been diagnosed with different things. OCD, bipolar not otherwise specified, major depressive disorder with psychotic features, schizoaffective disorder. I've been on atypical and typical antipsychotics for 10 years, and it keeps me in check. I don't know what to call myself.

I don't know what to call myself. I had to go into a partial-hospitalization program in July and talked to people who were diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia or schizoaffective, and they said that even on medication they still heard voices but it was better managed. One guy attacked a cop and resisted arrest while off his medication, but i never did that. As for bipolar, well, i do have believe i have some aspects of it but i'm not type 1 or type 2. I have mild OCD, but not as bad as once thought.

Here are my symptoms: i can't work, i find it very exhausting to be around people, i can't pay attention, i feel different from everybody else, i stumble over my thoughts when trying to explain something, and other negative symptoms. If i don't take my Trilafon weird **** starts happening.

From what i read this afternoon, schizo-_____ disorders are chronic and don't go away. I realized this means i won't get over the fact that i won't be able to be intimate with a woman, that i won't be able to go back to college, that i won't be able to experience much positive emotion, that i won't be able to connect to people like i did prior to getting sick, etc... It is depressing, and i feel a little helpless and hopeless right now. A couple of years ago, i felt very vulnerable to life because there wasn't much i could go to give me confidence or psychological strength.

How do I accept my illness and have a decent life even with the fact that my illness will always be there?

Rich

Your meds look pretty bipolar to me....could you have bipolar with psychosis? Well just to say I'm in the same boat as you...it's been 3.5 years and all they know for sure is I become psychotic from time to time....

As far as accepting your illness it's different for everyone and I'd suggest a good therapist since its not really an easy thing to do.

Thanks Sometimes psychotic, it does look like schizoaffective disorder, which has been the diagnosis in the past. I don't hear voices or become paranoid. I just know i meet the negative symptoms and, like i said, weird things start going through my mind if i don't take my Trilafon. I don't become hypomanic unless i try to work or do something i'm not supposed to. I don't really get depressed.

It's probably a little bit of a number of things. But accepting it is a mo****f*****.