Misdiagnosed?

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I refuse to take SSRI's cause they made me irritable as a child. From what I understand bipolars can have more severe side effects from taking SSRI's than normal people.

I have nonverbal learning disorder and the psychologist who diagnosed me with it told me that he didn't like to label people. I find that suspicious as I recall some of the traits I displayed as a child weren't NVLD specific. I would walk around in circles and flap my hands continously (I have since grown out of that) and display hand wringing. I still do that last part but I attribute that to my anxiety disorder. Anyways, I read that the hand flapping and the walking around were Asperger's related so I think I could of been misdiagnosed as NVLD rather than Asperger's.

Those two overlap quite a lot. A substantial proportion of people have both.

How did you do in math class? Are you able to visualize things easily? Can you mentally rotate an object to figure out how it would look from a different orientation? How good are your verbal skills?

The defining feature of NVLD is better verbal than nonverbal skills. If you don't have that, then you probably were misdiagnosed.

We are supposed to be able to do that? I can barely visualize anything. I might have been better when I was a kid though.

That's all fields of medicine unfortunately. Agreed 100%

Maybe upto some degree, but in my case I got always treated for the symptoms and NOT how you call them.
I mean, I have moodproblems anyway and it doesn't matter if you call them "depression", "bipolar" or something else and I want some help for this.
It is always you decision I you take meds and how many or not.
A friend of mine who is dx with Borderline PD gets a lot more stuff (once even up to 5 meds at the same time) than me dx with depression and a Bipolar suspicion from my shrink.
So you can't tell that easy. It also depends on the shrink and so on and mine is very carefull.

Sometimes this is true, but accurate diagnosis is also a lot harder than most people think.

You have to try to get the right impression of a person out of a brief encounter and whatever questions you think to ask them. And the possibilities are pretty much endless. I've heard it described as there being 100 symptoms for a thousand diagnoses, with each one being a different combination of symptoms.

And you don't even know if the person went to the right doctor. For example, since many Tourette kids first start out with blinking tics, their parents often first suspect a vision problem, and take them to the eye doctor. The eye doctor isn't expecting to see tics - they're expecting to see eye problems. So they examine the eyes carefully and find nothing wrong, or maybe they find something that could be something and misdiagnose the person. Or for another example, a person has seizures and blackouts, they assume it's neurological and focus testing on her brain, but it turns out she has a heart problem instead.

Doctors are people - people expected to learn and know a huge volume of information, and sort out all the different conditions to make the right diagnosis. Sometimes they make mistakes. It's not always a sign of bad practice - sometimes they're doing the best they can.

Yes, Tics are very tricky. I sniff and snore very often.
Many ppl. think then I have a cold, even my mother who has seen some tics. ^^



Yes, also many ppl. with a certain disorder are "atypical".
I never understood why Bipolar was so so long missed by shrinks in me and now even random ppl from my university can tell sometimes!?
Until I ordered a book about Bipolar a fiew days ago, where they described that a high amount of ppl with Bipolar start out with more "atypical" symptoms that can go on for months or years where the symptoms are more typical of a mixed episode and doesn't even have to fullfill enough criteria for either mania or depression at that time. This happens very often especially in young onset.

And THEN I understood WHY!

I went back in my biography and also viewing the symptoms I had back then and also those I have now, until I understood that I was a long time in the "pre Bipolar period" or "atypical" if you will and just maybe one or two years ago I started to get more and more typical, what confused my old shrink (who also said that), who thought I would be propably Borderline PD, but this didn't worked out (she dismissed me with NO diagnoses actually JUST suspicions ). And THEN I went to a new shrink, having developed much more typical symptoms that are seen in Bipolar, he also has more experience and also the fact that my half brother had schizophrenia was taken into account, where Bipolar is genetically related to.
But he was still very carefull for months and still is, dx me the right thing and not all are.
Well the Borderline PD suspicion got very fast removed being by a new shrink and replaced with a Bipolar suspicion.

Dx can be very difficult actually, also many shrinks don't have much knowledge about certain disorders.
I also didn't know before about the "development" of Bipolar until you really have fullblown Bipolar in a lot of cases and so on.

I'm finally putting it into works to see a doctor. My mood swings can be super rapid. I can go from super happy, to pissed, back to happy, to depressed, to whatever all in the same day.

Good!
Tell how it went!

I haven't seen a doctor yet, I'm working on it turning in all the paperwork and whatnot to see one at my school. I've had panic attacks too, had one yesterday during a bout of mania. Than felt depressed after the panic attack, but bounced back into mania within an hour.

This is exactly why I think misdiagnosis is the result of human abilities along with who is educating and funding the industry. Not all educations and practical abilities are equal, not all bodies are the same. The bias and agenda is not the issue, nor are mistakes. I just think this is applied to mental health more than other parts of the medical industry and that should no longer be overlooked.

We have to live in our bodies, in theory we should try to understand what these doctors are taught to help us and what it is based on. The second one of us thinks the doctor is in the wrong we should act and take part in the process whenever possible. It could save your life or quality of life.

I'm sure this process of treating ailments is more complex than one could imagine and a doctor being educated or having adequate resources is the minimum requirement for healing. Patient education, input, and intervention is crucial in all forms of medicine... Especially the forms least understood!

Don't ever give up and help the doctors help you, but helping yourself whenever possible is something I urge everyone to do. The doctors and pharmacists don't know everything, being under the influence of psychotropic compounds means you need to take that into account more so. I have these issues more with normal doctors (food and drug allergies along with Celiac's disease make me have to intervene more than most people) who will prescribe something that truly is dangerous without thinking since my conditions are uncommon, had I spoken up long ago to stop the misdiagnoses I would've saved my internal organs a TON of damage! I just urge everyone now that the second they think something is off they act and don't stop until adequate measures are achieved.

I failed at math considerably and I still struggle with it. My math 60 instructor gives us worksheets with pictures on it and we have translate them into certain problems and I don't understand how to do that. I can't solve word problems, translate English sentences into math problems but I have no problem in solving linear equations.

It depends on what you mean by visually.

No.

Um...I have no problem with communication involving written words but talking to someone face-to-face is just awkward for me. I can't read someone's demeanor...I'll elaborate on that by saying if someone is quiet, I cannot understand if they are irritated with me or if I'm not reading that right...same goes for voice tone.

Another thing I've noticed is I randomly will feel like I'm on speed. That I have tons of energy that I need to get out in some fashion. Thoughts fire out my head, I drive insanely fast, I have to be on the go. I feel like I'm bursting with energy.