I'm new to this Forum and have questions

Hi everyone,

   I am Rachel and I usually post on the A/P and Depression forums.  I am 20 years old and have been diagnosed with Major(Massive?) Depressive Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Anxiety Disorder.  Plus I have an eating disorder.  Lately I have been so all over the place I wonder if I'm not bipolar.  I am currently seeing a therapist and am on 40mg of Paxil a day plus 15mg Buspar twice a day.  I also have to take a sleeping pill to go to bed.  Actually two or three of them.

  Anyway my question is, how do I know if I am bipolar?  There are those magazine adds where there is a checklist for being bipolar and I always check almost all of the answers.  My husband thinks and has always said he thinks I'm bipolar.  I dont know what to do.  Any good links or advice is welcome.  Thanks to all!

                 RAchel

Thanks Closure,
So how did you go about getting diagnosed? I think my paxil makes me manic like at night. To the point where I cant sleep at all without a sleeping pill. It's like I'm extrememly energetic first thing in the morning then I get extrememly tired and sluggish. I get mean and irritable. Then at night I get so strung out I just walk around in circles in my house looking for something to do and though threre are plenty of things to do, I get nothing done. What is up with me? I just started seeing a new therapist. Can she diagnose me or does it have to be a phsychiatrist? I'm thinking about going to a pysch anyway. THanks for your story. Love to you!
Rachel

Hmm...have you noticed with the increases the sleeplessness and extra energy get worse? That's kind of how I got diagnosed. My former pdoc, he just left the practice so I see a new guy in Aug, suspected I was bipolar and basically did a little "experiment" on me. I was depressed so I didn't think anything of it when he would increase my paxil...that's what I was on at the time. As he would increase it I would get worse and worse manic wise. So the last time he increased he kind of did it more for the experiment than for my depression and I went through the roof. He decreased the paxil, but I still had problems so he took me off of it all together. And looking back before I was diagnosed any SSRI I took did this to me. So don't just think it's paxil because that's what I was on when I was diagnosed and that's what you're on. Zoloft was a big trigger for me too early on when they just fed me sedatives to try to bring me down. I would be bouncing off the walls, almost crawling out of my skin, running around like a mad woman, lots of shopping, lots of risky behaviors...etc.

A psychiatrist is your best bet for being diagnosed. Most therapists aren't medical doctors which is why most of them don't prescribe meds, but they can give you an opinion on what they think you might have, but that wouldn't be a definite diagnosis. So if you don't have one already find yourself a good pdoc and tell him your story. It may take them a while to officially diagnose you because they need to get to know you and figure it out on their own. I highly doubt in one visit they'd diagnose you bipolar especially if you're diagnosed borderline. Like I said there are tons of similarites between the two disorders. It takes a good pdoc to figure out if you are one or the other or even both. So be patient and hopefully you'll be on your way to a definite diagnosis whether it be the same as the one you have now or a new one. *hugs*

Hi Thirsty,

Welcome to our board.

Closure and Zolscody have already given you great advice. I just wanted to echo a couple of thoughts -- BPD often echoes bipolar disorder in symptoms so the two get misdiagnosed for one another often enough. Also, the quiz in the magazines is just a very general tool to get you to the doctor: it's not meant to be comprehensive. You definitely want to see a psychiatrist for a definitive diagnosis. Therapists are fantastic -- they can give you feedback, but they cannot diagnose you and they cannot prescribe medications, so go to someone who is very well educated on the subject. You need someone who works with these disorders on a daily basis and knows the subtleties.

Here are a couple of good links on bipolar, but they're general information sites. They'll only help you so far:

www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/bipolar-disorder/symptoms.shtml

www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=By_Illness&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLid=54&Contentid=23037

www.mayoclinic.com/health/bipolar-disorder/DS00356/DSECTION=symptoms

Hope this is useful.

serafena

Hi Rachel,

I'm the same as you - I normally post in Depression (not sure if we have spoke before now) but just read your post here & feel that how you feel is a lot like me aswell, I've been diagnosed with Mild depression and a little bit of OCD!Not sure if my Doctor could be anymore vague!! lol! I've been depressed since I was a teenager (25 now) and I have also had eating disorders in my late teens.   Not really sure that I have anything useful to contribute here, but just thought I'd say hello and tell you that I can relate!

Li