after looking @ DSM 5 website im gonna loose other diagnosis

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oh wow i just realized after looking at the DSM 5 website im going to loose my other diagnoses
the doctors are going to have to decide what it is there is no longer gonna be a Mood disorder nos i guess ecause they are seperating anxiety disorders into one catergory and depressive ones into the other? they were thinking of a mixed anxiety depressive code ( which i think i was origanally diagnosed with before it was even in the dsm when it was in the reasearch section of DSMIV back when i was like 8.(along with adhd) (before they realized i had asperger's) so what are they gonna do with me?

As someone with very mild AS, I am concerned about my own diagnosis after DSM5 is released.

So I know the feeling.

I am willing to be retested again if they had to re test me. I would like to have an accurate diagnoses. If it turns out I was never on the spectrum, I'd be fine with that. But my husband thinks I am on the spectrum. I have been slapped with so many labels and AS was the last one and it helped me. I just feel my psychiatrist took a bunch of labels I have and my poor social skills and anxiety and made it all ASD because it made enough components. But mom told me in my teens I outgrew dyspraxia and sensory processing disorder thanks to therapy I had. I am just a weird girl.

I can understand that too well.

I actually never cared about my depression diagnosis (I'm under Bipolar suspicion but "just" dx with depressions at the moment, so long it's not totally clear), but my old shrink just redx me in the end, so officially I was not depressed anymore and I was very mad about it, then I came to a new shrink who redx me again with depressions and I was very happy, telling everyone: "I have my depression diagnosis back...!"

I still believe that the patient knows very often best when a lable really fits, but second that some ppl aren't clear cut cases. Those diagnostic criterias are more or less "ideals", how those diagnoses are supposed to look like.
When I had a trauma, two years ago (I still have some symptoms left, but not that strong that you still need to dx it), no psychiatrist could really tell what I have and then a trauma expert explained it: I had DESNOS (disorder of extreme stress, not otherwise stated). That's everything that doesn't fit in the other diagnostic lables. Psychiatrists are never really happy about "NOS" diagnoses, but I don't know if they add some "NOS" in the end, in the new DSM-V, because even in the future with a "better" diagnostic system there will be cases who wouldn't fit into one of the new designed cathegories. So I don't know what they are going to do with them.

Removing a "mood disorder" category is one of the DSM 5's biggest mistakes if you ask me. It is further separating unipolar depression from bipolar disorder. Why in the world do we need a bipolar disorder category over a mood disorder category? So many people who eventually are found to be bipolar have their first mood episode be a major depression episode. These people are thought to have unipolar depression UNTIL they develop hypomania/mania in the future. Like any of this can be discerned from the DSM 5's new set-up!

It's the reason behind that mood disorder though isn't it which is the real issue? What is 'mood disorder'? How do you define it by itself. Moods can be affected by almost anything including the weather. It is the underlying reasons behind the mood disorder which I understand the DSM 5 is getting at.

Besides ultimately you will always know what you have and that label will always be yours whether it's covered by DSM 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, to whatever number and beyond or not. The DSM 5 is really a clinical diagnostic tool so it's not really as big an issue as you all seem to think. If anything it makes the system better and integrates new ideas and ways of working with old traditional ideas which most people would agree is a really really good idea. In with the new, out with the old!

Defining mood disorder isn't hard at all. Take the clinical definitions of all mood states other than euthymia, and you have all the mood disorders.

Dysthymia
Major Depressive Disorder
Bipolar Disorder, Including Cyclothymia (all possible forms/combinations of mania, hypomania, depression, and mixed episodes)
Schizoaffective Disorder (bipolar type and depressive type)

And there you go. That is what "mood disorder" means. It's a term that's being defined by operational/clinical definitions of the above mood states, and the DSM 5 is splitting these all apart. Schizoaffective disorder is going in with the psychoses, which is ignoring its mood component. Bipolar disorder is being split from unipolar depression, something Kraepelin would have really frowned upon. And it just goes on and on. Mood disorders are best shown as a spectrum, much more so than ASDs. There are many different mood states and many different combinations of said mood states. And this is why the DSM 5's new system is just garbled garbage.

From my shrink friend, working at a big deal research uni, who's work is in Bipolar Disorder.

Bipolar depression and Unipolar depression are entirely two different beasts. You treat them with different medications, if you know what the hell you are doing as a psychiatrist.

Why BP folks are first diagnosed with Unipolar depression is

1) unless you are psychotically manic, who is going to show up at a shrink's office, complaining about feeling too good, too productive, and too on top of the world?

2) Add an antidepressant to a depressed Bipolar patient, with no mood stabilizer, and count down the days until a rip roaring mania starts. How I got diagnosed, thank you Zoloft. Nothing like going from depression to psychosis in less than 5 days.

The only official FDA drug found useful in treating Bipolar Depression is Zyprexa and Prozac (forgot the trade name of that drug combo). All the other antidepressants don't do much more than a placebo, when used alone, and are considered off label use.

Though, it has been found the MAOIs help a bit with Bipolar Depression. Most general shrinks are too chicken to try them out. Parnate has work wonderfully for me.

For grins and giggles, Schizoaffective Disorder has always been considered a garbage can diagnosis. The major reason, which shoved it back into the Schizophrenia camp, is the presence of psychotic features with a stable mood for longer than two weeks. Bipolar patients never have psychotic features during a stable mood. Bipolar patient may not even be on maintenance medications. All my Schizoaffective friends, have to stay on medications or the psychotic features come back even with a stable mood.

Of course, this decision is highly unpopular because 1) Schizophrenia is such a loaded diagnosis to have. I know of psychiatrists who will flat out not treat Schizophrenics. 2) There is no public "up side" to Schizophrenia. Depression is more or less not even a raised eye brow. Bipolar, oh yeah, you are one of those creative, edgey folks. The whole artsy, risk takers. Schizophrenia ::crickets::, and oh, yeah, you are REALLY mentally ill. Every time some poor soul wipes out his/her family and the family pets, the media hype is either 1) Schizophrenia or 2) Bipolar disorder. Though, in my area, a Bipolar diagnosis doesn't buy you much sympathy. The court system seems to ignore that, and if found guilty will do jail time. Schizophrenia is more, poor sick soul, and you get to spent the rest of your life at the state forensic psychiatric hospital.

Tawaki, BP I, mostly manias.

I didn't even know they weren't already separate. Obviously bipolar depression, unipolar depression, and anxiety disorders are separate things (not always but it's better to have a specific label rather than 'mood disorder').

Of course bipolar and unipolar depression are very different entities. But do their differences mean they aren't BOTH problems with abnormal mood? This is why the new DSM-5 proposal is silly. It is just as silly as taking OCD out of the anxiety disorder category. It IS an anxiety disorder. Same as how bipolar disorder IS a mood disorder. So what is the use of making a "bipolar disorder" category and an "obsessive-compulsive disorders" category? The bottom line is that the main problem in bipolar disorder is one of mood. It is, at its very core, a MOOD disorder, same as unipolar depression, and separating the two makes very little sense.

Secondly, schizoaffective disorder is quite real. It is not a "garbage can diagnosis" like so many others in the DSM. There are people who have classic schizophrenia, there are people who have classic bipolar disorder (where psychotic symptoms only occur during the abnormal mood), and then there are people who have psychotic mood episodes but continue having psychotic symptoms once they return to a euthymic state. Furthermore, it has been found that the spectrum from "pure" bipolar disorder to "pure" schizophrenia is not always cut in stone. There are many shades and varieties in between, and schizoaffective disorder is the perfect representation of this. In the DSM-IV, schizoaffective disorder is characterized as a mood disorder, as it should be. "Psychosis" isn't limited to the so-called "psychotic disorders." What distinguishes the "psychotic disorders" is the TYPES of hallucinations, delusions, and thought disorder symptoms. This is where 1st-rank Schneiderian symptoms come into play.

I'm not concerned; I know who I am and what I'm capable of.

My diagnosis does not define the essential me.

Diagnosis, schmiagnosis.

They don't know what to do with us anyway.

One of these days they are going to have to figure out Bokanovski's Process. Either that or stop subscribing to the idea that human beings are or should be Model T Fords.

Star for anyone who can name the literary reference.

Two stars for anyone who can find mistakes in my usage of the terminology. 'Cause my books are still in boxes, and that means your eiditic memory is cooler than mine.

For the record,if you're in good enough shape to risk losing your diagnosis, be thankful. I really really really don't think I'd mind losing my diagnosis. I'd lose a lot of fear to go with it. I also really really really don't think I'm going to get that lucky.

The point is that those individuals who are losing a diagnosis are NOT in "good enough shape" to lose the diagnosis. Rather, the poor new criteria make it so individuals who still struggle daily but are not the most severe case do not get diagnosed, and therefore, do not receive services and accommodations for that diagnosis. Just because you are not the most severe case of some particular disorder does not mean that you do not need help in life to achieve your full potential despite having a neuropsychiatric disorder. Insurance companies only listen to what the DSM declares, regardless of whether or not these declarations are valid. And the DSM is not the end-all, be-all authority on what is a neuropsychiatric disorder. I have NVLD. Is that a real condition? Absolutely. Is it in the DSM? No. Does that mean I don't struggle in life because of my NVLD? Absolutely not.