Have you been diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety or Bipolar ..?

Question

If so .. who were you diagnosed by and how long approx. did it take to be diagnosed by them??? Im just heading into talking with somebody but kinda want to know how long is expected

Answer 1

any sort of depression can be tide over by faith in GOD and sincere prayer.

Your prayer is from your heart. Further You must have to understood the fact that God is present in our heart. This can be realised in meditation. Further we are the creation of our own destiny. As per Hindu sacred religion, we carry all good and bad deeds life after life. There is no end unless we pray for unification of self with the divineliness.
Hence there is always a possible way to complete mergence with God in this life by a simple and wonderful meditation

Answer 2

I was diagnosed with major depression, social anxiety and bi-polar II disorder about 3 years ago. Two years ago they changed the bi-polar II to borderline personality disorder. As someone else said, it's not as important what label they give you as much as that they make you feel comfortable so that you open up to them and inform them of all of your symptoms.

A word of advice on something I still struggle with-- there are things that might seem perfectly normal to you that are symptoms of your illness(es). This is where the skill of the practitioner comes into play in knowing how to ask the right questions. The more questions they ask you the better. My psychiatrist's office, which came highly recommended, had me sit at a computer and answer a couple hundred questions or so before I even talked to the Dr.

Don't rely on a general practitioner, seek out a psychiatrist, or if you want to try to improve without meds, a social worker, certified counselor or psychologist will do (but don't expect a diagnosis from them.)

If you do try meds keep two things in mind-- patience and don't get your hopes up. Be patient and give each medication you try at least 6 weeks (or however long the Dr. says), and know that there are some people, like me, who try a dozen different medications of all different classes which don't help at all.

Also, get in the habit, once you get prescribed a med or get a diagnosis, to inform yourself as much as you can about them. There are plenty of web sites to tell you about medications and diagnoses. As for diagnoses, I would also recommend reading a couple books on the illness because knowledge is a form of therapy itself.

I wish you luck, patience, resilience and I hope you can afford the mental health care you require! Remember to try the more affordable therapists (state-funded services) first-- they might not be that bad in your area.

Answer 3

I was having some really bad stomach problems a couple years ago, and it took them several months to figure out my gall bladder had gone bad. All that time, I was very ill. Eventually I had surgery to correct the problem, but my symptoms persist to this very day. I was formally diagnosed with anxiety/panic attacks not long ago. Apparently, I developed it when I was acutely ill and the doctors couldn't determine the problem. It freaked me out so badly that I became damaged goods, so to speak.

These things often present with physical symptoms, so it's only natural for a physician to look for physical causes first. Naturally, diagnosis can take a while.

It's been three months since my anxiety diagnosis, and I'm in such bad shape that I have refused treatment. I know it's wrong, but I just cannot bring myself to take the pills. I had an adverse reaction to a drug just before diagnosis, and that's all I can think about when I look at the bottle.

So my advice is not to get in the same trap. I've done lots of research on the subject, and you probably won't get better anytime soon without pharmaceuticals or at least CBT. With those things, a lot of people have had a good deal of success with their anxiety. By all means, find a doctor you can trust and follow his or her advice.

Good luck to you.

Answer 4

I answered your other question, too.

It took me years to get a diagnosis, and at the time, I had classic bipolar symptoms. But I also had been sexually abused, and that confused the issue. The average time to diagnose bipolar is 8 years, but now that there is a big info campaign out about it, it may actually be overdiagnosed (or maybe it was always sooooo severely underdiagnosed?) I think you can expect your diagnosis to get tweaked for at least a couple of years. If your treatment doesn't help you for that long, then you need to rethink the diagnosis, too. But again, the diagnosis doesn't matter much, because the pills target your symptoms, not the diagnosis. Oh yeah, and on the other answer, I forgot to mention, counseling is a really good add on to the pills. counseling plus pills is better than either alone, lots of research supports that. Good luck!

Answer 5

I was diagnosed by my MD as having depression about 5 years ago. A word of advice.....family doctors are often limited in the amount of time they can spend to get a true diagnosis, and alot of them lack the experience to properly treat depression and anxiety disorders. Psychiatrists are much better-equipped to make that sort of diagnosis. It's possible to have more than one mental illness, and often times depression is a symptom of another illness, such as obsessive-cumpulsive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder. This is where a psychiatrist's experience and training can help obtain a correct diagnosis. It may take 1-5 one-hour visits, or more, before the psyciatrist will settle on one or more diagnoses. Although not perfect, many websites have "screener" tests to determine if a person may be clinically depressed, or other screeners to narrow down the symptoms of another illness.

Answer 6

I was diagnosed with depression about 6 years ago. It's not something you ever get rid of. But you can control it. You don't have to take meds for the rest of your life either. It will come and go all your life. Everyone deals with depression at some point in their lives. A lot of people don't know what depression really is. They think that if you're depressed, it means that you have to be sad about something. Not true. Depression is under/over eating, erratic sleep patterns.(I either sleep 18 hrs in a day or go to sleep at night and get up 40 times in the middle of the night, which also is anxiety mixed in there). You lose interests in things that you used to be interested in. You can withdraw from friends, family, spouse. You often feel hopelessness. You can't do simple day to day tasks like getting out of bed, showering, grooming, etc. The initial visit to your psychiatrist will get you a diagnosis and Rx. He will ask you a series of Q's or have you fill out a questionaire for him to look over. My 1st Dr. wasn't very social(medical Dr.), but the last one was very nice. He talked to me, listened to me, and asked whatever he needed, to determine which meds he should prescribe. The whole process took less than an hour.

Answer 7

Your doctor, especially your MD, gets paid from pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. They are paid to tell you something is wrong, and give you a drug for it. They will tell you in a second that you have depression or attention deficit, on and on.

You have to go to a psychiatrist to be truly diagnosed with a mental disorder. That requires a showing of symptoms that is consistent with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It requires testing and qualified observation. Because you want relief sooner, doctors are able to sell drugs to you much faster, on a hasty diagnosis.

The chances of having depression and anxiety in your life are 100% that you will. Whether or not these symptoms can be classified as a true disorder remains to be seen. Because of the length of the process, money talks and you can get your drugs faster. This is unfortunately creating a drug dependent society, equally reliant on diagnosing itself and going to doctors "requesting" if they can have a certain disorder, by displaying the symptoms.

Answer 8

I was diagnosed with depression when I was 19. I had mood swings but because I swung low-normal, they didn't consider me bipolar (I wasn't manic). Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Type II. After talking to a counselor and a psychiatrist, they decided, my "normal" was actually hypomania. The problem was I generally felt good and didn't think anything about these time.

I was originally put on Zoloft at 19, but I emmotionally flat-lined. They was my friends and family described me was - a building could be burning around me and I wouldn't care. I didn't care about anything or anyone. I was emmotionally numb (and I am a very sensitive person). This time around I am on Trileptal for mood stabilization and a very low dose of Topomax to help with sleep/obsessive eating.

My psych is not a very good doctor, but I am a student and I have to go where the school sends me, so for right now, he is all I can get. He diagnosed me after one visit and immediately medicated me and is convinced that's all there is to the story. Very little is said after our intial hellos about how I am doing and we usually end up BSing about science (I have tons of questions about the field - I study biomedical stuff).

Be careful, I would hate to see you in a position I am in if you can afford better. I would think it should take several visits for them to really get to know you and properly diagnose you. And watch out for pill doctors.

Answer 9

I have been diagnosed with depression, which has been exacerbated through an addiction. If you are going in for an evaluation, it should take about 60-90 minutes. You should know then if you are dealing with any of the issues you mentioned. You'll likely be put on some meds soon afterwards.

Answer 10

yeah I was diagnosed with a serious case of depression about 2 years ago. If you tell them your symptoms they should diagnose you there on that visit, especially if you tell the dr. that you've been having suicidal thoughts (because that was my case). That was what my dr. did with me. He gave me some meds and I felt a whole lot better as soon as I started taking them. I got off of them about a year ago and I've been miserable ever since....I seriously think that I need to go back and get some more since this depression keeps on ruling my life.