questioning diagnosis?

[chaer57]

I’m not sure where to put this but I’m sure other people must have been in the same situation i am in now. About 2 years ago I was diagnosed with depression, psychosis and they were considering anxiety disorders. I was having trouble attending school, leaving my house and being in public. I felt paranoid, heard strange repetitions ( not voices, but single phrases sometimes sentences constantly repeating in my head). I often had feelings of killing myself as a benefit to society, and was convinced people were constantly trying to kill me. I was failing miserably in school and decided to try and fix myself.

My doctor sent me to a psychologist in the mental health wing of the local hospital. The set me up with counselling (which I regularly missed as i was afraid to leave my house) and put me on several medication. Initially i was given an antidepressant of which i can’t recall, which seemed to make things worse, but i was told to stay on it. After increasing dosages and worsening results i was switched to Paxil. I was then recommended to specialist at another mental health facility and he said i had psychosis put me on medication which i believe was called respiridone(sp?). I was given another pill for anxiety, all of which i can remember was a small green one and a name starting with L.

After sometime of dealing with medication with nominal results at best, counsellors and physiatrists who seemed apathetic to another run-of-the-mill case, and a deteriorating academic situation, I stopped everything and told myself i just had to get it together. I enrolled in school again, got a job and started putting things back together.

I am however again, dysfunctional, failing etc. I’m not suicidal (that in retrospect seems stupid, though i can’t seem to properly justify my existence) I can’t seem to put everything back together properly. After that lengthy introduction my question is, how do i know anything to actually wrong with me? Maybe i’m just disorganized and lazy? What if I’m just strangely eccentric with poor academic performance? The professionals i saw always hinted they had no real idea what was wrong with me in addition to caring very little. But how can you blame them? There might be hundreds of people who are claiming mental illness when they’re just sad, pissed off or unsociable. Am i missing something here? Any response i greatly appreciated.... and sorry for such a lengthy post.

 

[nickh]

chaer I want to try and give a practical answer to your questions so I'm going to leave on one side the interesting questions about eccentricity and normality and what they mean. For practical purposes if your mental state is preventing you living the life you want to lead then you have a mental health issue. Think of it in exactly the same way you would about a physical health issue - if you have a bout of flu and can't get out of bed then you are sick and no-one questions it. Well if your mental health stops you leaving the house (for example) then you are also ill. It is not a matter of fault or blame.

Now everything that you say suggests to me that you have a mental health problem. We are not professionals here so we can't diagnose. But it would appear that you have not received proper medical care. I am though a bit surprised about the whole way in which you were dealt with. Before proceeding can I ask if you are in the UK?

Nick.

 

[chaer57]

no actually, I'm in canada. I'm fortunate enough to have alot of the mental health expenses covered by the gov, but unfortunately medication is not. I didn't really like the medication though, and in some ways I felt like it increased my symptoms.

 

[Dollit]

You're not alone in feeling that medication increases symptoms and doesn't help. My current medication regime is wonderful but not everybody responds to medication.

As Nick says, if you're not functioning properly because of the way you feel then it's a problem. How you deal with that problem depends upon a lot of factors. Some medics doe seem to give up and almost blame the person with the problem. Others are well worth their salaries. I'm luck enough to have had the latter for a long time.

And glad to have you on board here.

 

[nickh]

no actually, I'm in canada. I'm fortunate enough to have alot of the mental health expenses covered by the gov, but unfortunately medication is not. I didn't really like the medication though, and in some ways I felt like it increased my symptoms.

The reason I asked chaer was that in the UK you wouldn't have been sent to a psychologist (unless it means something else in Canada?) at the hospital - here people would be referred to a psychiatrist ( we generally have to fight tooth and nail to get access to a psychologist!). The thing is that clearly you need better professional help but as I don't have any idea how the Canadian system works don't really have any idea how you would start accessing this.

But you can keep posting about your situation - there will be people here who will be able to relate to it and while they can't give professional advice they can tell you of their own experiences and sometimes what has helped.

Nick.

 

[chaer57]

thanks alot for the replies. Yeah, i'll keep poting every so often to see if anyone else has been misdiagnosed or had better results with a change of help or medication. I'll try and get in contact with some mental health professionals again and maybe get a second opinion. thanks again for the replies!