Dangers of Self Diagnosis

My doctor, *mod edit* is one such doctor. I went to him with: stress, insomnia and anxiety (which I have self diagnosed over time to be BPD) and he asked me barely any questions about it before prescribing me a lowish dose of schizophrenia medication. I never took it. Not for sleep and anxiety buddy.

I feel like he's a total crock. Not that ones opinion on the subject makes them an idiot, but I asked him his thoughts on medical marijuana and he said he would NEVER in his life prescribe it or send anyone to a doctor who would.

What about cancer patients? Glaucoma patients, people with other chronic pain? I have insomnia (bad sleep) and anxiety and it helps significantly with both, although it increases my impulsiveness and white and black thinking, I just act on it more.

I just think anybody who has not tried or researched something thoroughly should not be allowed to encroach their opinion on others. Its unprofessional.
But yesterday at the movies with my gf I saw an old kindof-friend from my old high school and had a REALLY social and good conversation with him while I was baked for Paranormal Acrivity: the Marked Ones; which is silly btw

xosemx wrote:With regards to self diagnoses with AvPD, I ended up coming across the disorder when searching for reasons why I am how I am and every single symptom matched perfectly, even symptoms that I didn't think was related to any mental problems.

I'm satisfied with my self-diagnosis.

Self diagnosis is only reliable if you're qualified to do so. Same goes for doctors. It's not like they have access to secret special information that we don't.

But psychiatric diagnosis is something that is not precise. It's just guidance, an estimative, a guess on which direction to look for more clues to treatment and precautions to take. And then, it takes insight and thorough investigation from an able person that not only knows all the literature and criteria for diagnosis, it's good with psychology, but is also experienced in dealing with said diagnosis and it's subtleties (because honestly, this stuff varies greatly from person to person, culture to culture).

And there's the necessity of excluding other medical causes. I remember a case of an elderly woman who everyone thought at first had schizophrenia for months. Turns it out it was ammonia poisoning due to liver malfunctioning causing psychiatrical symptoms that mimicked schizophrenia. Luckly her son in law was not only a good psychiatrist, but also a great physician - who took the time to investigate further.

A lot of good psychiatrists rely on good insight "from the gut as well. After all, very little is known about the brain and medications.
Treatment (including meds and therapy) are mainly symptomatic. Therapy isn't sure at all. Medications affect individuals differently. So even then, it's trial and error and guessing. The kind of substances that work for all kinds of conditions are increasing. I found out magnesium with zinc are one of the best antidepressants and anxiolitics I ever took, for example. With a very low side effect profile and chance for intoxication.

It's all guesswork. If it works, it works, if it doesn't, try something else and keep the detective work up.

I read half of the discussion here, so not everything, but a whole bunch.

fifty6chev wrote:My 23 year old son has been diagnosed with all sorts of things depending on which profressional he's talking to. On several occasions, he has diagnosed himself and the professional agreed.
Meds seem to work the same way. Tell the doctor you need Prozac, and then they prescribe it.

In my case it was pretty much the same.
I've been misdiagnosed before for one or two years and psychiatrists couldn't quite treat me, because nothing worked, until I changed psychiatrists, told him after several months what I think and he didn't agree on all, but on the basic symptoms. I thought autism and 1) schizoaffective or 2) schizotypal PD and depression and he diagnosed me with schizotypal PD with autistic thought patterns and depression.

So I agree that the patient knows him/herself best in most cases. In the first posting the situation is different out multiple reasons:
1) this person didn't self diagnose, but a family member had a certain opinion.
2) one psychiatrist said something and there isn't even mentioned a second opinion, so how do we know the psychiatrist is right? Some disorders are more "popular" than others to diagnose and PPD is been diagnosed rarely, but BPD on the other hand very often. Also studies showed that girls and boys with the same set of symptoms tend to get diagnosed differently by experts and that with the same symptoms.

Also Tony Attwood, an Asperger's specialist mentioned that about 80% of ppl who have self diagnosed them with aspergers and come to him, are correct. Okay that's one disorder, but I could imagine that it's similar with other mental disorders and that's quite a high number. When I imagine how often I read that ppl have been misdiagnosed by mental health professionals, they aren't better in diagnosing. There are many reasons to it. Psychiatrists can't look in your head and also aren't around their patients 24/7, so they've to rely on an impression made in a clinical setting and not in "real life". They also have to rely on the information the patients give them and many psychiatrists aren't that well trained actually. Many psychiatrists are good of course, but about 30% of psychiatrists I met don't have a clue at all. I once talked to a psychiatrist, after he had misdiagnosed me back than, why he did that after such a short time knowing me and he just answered: "well, I had to diagnose something"
I think this explains a lot. Psychiatrists usually don't take the time to analyse for months or even years, what the patient really has, but just diagnose their first guess in many cases. In my country psychiatrists just get money from the insurgence, if there is a diagnosis. So they really have to diagnose "something" to get their money, even if they aren't sure. That's also why diagnosing disorders in suspicion is so popular.

I spent nearly 2 years inpatient and most of the time as outpatient in a big psychiatry. I just got tested once for one hour and after 2 years(!) I was released with just suspicions, nothing more, no real diagnosis. They just didn't know what I had. So I self diagnosed myself and went to a psychiatrist. He didn't agree a 100%, but in most things he actually did and since that the treatment is a lot more successful than before. I also have the feeling since a long time that I've been understood.
Maybe it's not 100% correct now,possible, but the direction is correct and that's the important point.
I still suspect I could have schizoaffective bipolar type II instead of schizotypal PD and depression, but first of all I'm not sure myself and second of all with a schizoaffective label there is a high probability that I would get much stronger psychiatric drugs than I get now and I don't want that.

Of course ppl can be wrong when they self diagnose, but psychiatrists too. So and in my opinion it's the best when the patient also has his/her own opinion what's going on with them and informs him/herself and works together with an experienced psychiatrist to make sure to find the best combination of treatment.