Posted by Quintal on September 6, 2008, at 13:12:56
In reply to Re: Bipolar Spectrum » SLS, posted by Toph on September 5, 2008, at 15:49:14
>I began to feel an identity crisis of sorts as I rarely ever had the opportunity to associate with people like myself outside of the psych ward. Don't get me wrong, it's good that people differentiate and accurately classify psychiatric disorders. It just feels like some of the people who share Bipolar disorder with me don't have my disorder at all.
I feel the same way. What do you feel defines your bipolar I disorder as being seperate from bipolar II?
There are no support groups in my area, but the online ones I've gone to have mostly been dominated by bipolar IIs. For a long time that was my diagnosis, so I understand, but after it took this new turn (psychosis + enforced hospitalization) I feel like I have quite a different illness on top of the original mood disorder. It seems an awful lot like Schizophrenia to me. It's interesting that my mental health team has been split into 'affective' and 'psychosis' groups. My social worker has been assigned to the affective group, but I have been put into the psychosis group. I have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which I thought was primarily an affective disorder.
I'm confused by statements like this "Extreme manic episodes can sometimes lead to psychotic symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations." What happens if the psychotic symptoms occur without extreme manic symptoms? Does that happen often in bipolar I, or does it warrant a different diagnosis? It seems that since I crossed the line into manic psychosis I get psychotic symptoms fairly often even when I'm not manic.
>Anyway, I hate to sound like a Bipolar snob, but somehow my 5 stays in the locked unit of a psych ward has made me kind of sensitive to others using my diagnosis loosely. I wonder if anyone else feels little possesive about their diagnoses as I do.
I feel like I've earned it after years of having my self-reported symptoms invalidated! My psychologist wants me to give up mental illnes as part of my identity. She feels that so long as bipolar disorder defines my identity it will make recovery difficult. This isn't something new to me, but it's painful and irritating to have it shoved in my face like that. My old pdoc discharged me in 2006 as basically a malingerer. I had no treatment and gave up the idea that had any sort of mental illness, and people here were very cirital of that. Last October I became psychotic for the first time. In fact I think I was talking to you at the time! Bipolar does form a part of my identity because it's something I live with all the time. I'm as skeptical about the medical models as I am about the psychological theroies, but bipolar is real whatever it is, and it's still going to be there whether it's part of my identity or not.
Q
poster:Quintal
thread:850483
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080903/msgs/850656.html