I got my diagnosis as a teenager. I am now in my 30s. To this day I continue to have realizations about how I’m not actually just a lazier piece of crap than everyone else around me.
My shrink told me he regularly has middle age people break down and start crying when they get their diagnosis. I guess thinking you’re a lazy piece of shit your whole life has a bit of a negative emotional impact, lol.
I was lucky enough to have a Mother who was aware enough to get me a diagnosis when I was 10. My dad still no matter what thinks im lazy and what didnt work for him should magically work for me.
A diagnosis is very important because almost all mental/personality/executive functioning disorders share similar symptoms (anxiety, depression, etc.), but require different approaches for treatment.
It’s very possible for someone to be diagnosed with ADHD and depression when really they’re bipolar 2, and common depression medications (SSRIs) can have extremely adverse reactions with bipolar disorder.
It’s also super common for women to not be diagnosed with autism, but instead be given a laundry list of other diagnoses instead.
A proper diagnosis is imperative to getting the right treatment, whether that’s meds, therapy, or self help.
The process of diagnosis when it involves actual testing is legitimate. Which does include ADHD. Provided your comfortable gatekeeping it behind only people who can pay hundreds of dollars for neuropsyche testing.
But the process where it concerns anxiety, depression and bipolar? It’s not. These do not have any biomarkers in diagnosis, and psychiatrists are not actually experts at identifying this stuff by asking a handful of questions for 15 minutes. Their years of training doesn’t make them have some magical ability to identify a soup of random incoherent symptoms accurately, and they are not significantly more accurate than moderately well informed patients at identifying themselves. That’s why people are so commonly misdiagnosed. It’s literally just the person’s opinion. And you shop around for the right opinion. Then they actually diagnosis you with whatever is required to get the insurance to pay for the medicine. That’s what diagnosis actually is. It’s a paper to have insurance pay for medical care. And it is not science.
Some books on the subject if you want more authoritative sourcing:
I think we mostly agree, given you acknowledge misdiagnosis is rampant within psychiatry. Is it rather that you see the DSM itself as legitimate, and doctor are just misunderstanding it which causes misdiagnosis?
“Stuff”, “handful”, “15 minutes” are a classic manipulation of the facts to insinuate validity of your point, and not a very clever attempt at it, either. Citing texts that completely refute your malformed stab at an educated point do not help your stance, and in fact just further reveal you as willfully talking out of your ass.
Folk. I don’t think I’m some clever smarty-pants and I don’t understand why I’m being talked to like I’m shitting on your mother’s corpse.
I also don’t understand how citing books that agree with and informed my position is evidence I’m making shit up. You seem determined to read me as a evil stupid troll.
I understand there’s no point in arguing with people hostile to you. But I genuinely do not understand. This is not me trolling or trying to bait or trick you.
Medical gatekeeping through diagnosis has a long history that you clearly are sympathetic to with your early acknowledgement of how institutionally these experts somehow keep misdiagnosing things. And I’m sure you’re also fully aware how entire medical diagnosis have been invented and uninvented for the purpose of persecution such as for hysterical women and blacks who ran away from slavery. I would argue we see that even today with how gender dysphoria diagnosis criteria has been used to gatekeep trans healthcare. This is not me being bad faith, and if you want me to dive deeper into this I can because it’s a huge topic.
I understand if you think psyches are doing good shit by being on demand well informed people to help people understand themselves. I agree with you!
But most diagnosis really is 15 minutes of questions that’s not a bad faith exaggeration. That’s literally what it is. And then they give their opinion. And it is an opinion. Different equally qualified person will give an entirely different opinion
I don’t know how to convince you I’m not some bad faith troll, and if that’s really what you think I am you would should stop replying. What I am is someone who has seen how the medical diagnosis model abuses people. Tells them, especially women, that they don’t know their own minds and experiences, and how it gatekeeps the poor who don’t get the luxury to shop around until some doctor tells them what they needed to hear.
I don’t think doctors should be ignored. But diagnosis is a deeply flawed system. It’s neither accessible nor proven more accurate than the alternatives. It can do good, and it does do good. But revering it as if it is a hard science is absurd. It’s not like getting a CAT scan for medical diagnosis. It is genuinely, just someone’s opinion which they write so insurance will pay for treatment. And it doesn’t claim to be more than that!
So why should someone who can’t afford it, will be abused and ignored by such a system be required to be legitimized by it? Why do they need that to get the care they need? Why should people have to do that when their symptoms are self evident? So you really think the risk of letting people know themselves based off an informed consent system, is worse than the reality of medical gatekeeping? Do you really think it’s killing fewer people than the alternative? What if they live somewhere where they isn’t an option? What if their family refuses to have them seen? Why add these barriers?
Why aren’t they allowed to be legitimate? Why aren’t they allowed to get care?
Do you actually have any evidence that gatekeeping mental illness behind diagnosis does more good than the harm?
Are you high? Self-diagnoses leads to an incredible amount of poor choices, and your condoning, much less outright championing that bullshit is disgustingly irresponsible. Do better. Be better. Next time.
Nah I’m championing it. I’ve spent decades in this system and worked with people who do the diagnosing. Your position of reverence for the process of diagnosis or the authority of those doing diagnosis is not well founded. People who are too poor to get diagnosed are still needing help regardless of wheather an academic has weighted in on the subject. Diagnosis is an opinion, to get insurance to pay for healthcare. That’s all it is. I can recommend you some books on the subject if you actually care to learn more about the topic of how diagnosis actually works.
Sorry, not sorry. You’re so full of shit at every turn, that question becomes more substantiated with every sentence you burble out. (For example: “…doing diagnoses”? FFS. Really?) Your feeble attempt to employ logical fallacy to prop up your lack of argument by exploiting some faceless demographic and shift the concern from your own personal opinion is juvenile and transparent AF. I know I said “Do better” already, but maybe you need to hear it more often. Do better.
I’m not sure if you’re this much of an idiot or just low-level trolling, but neither are my problem. Your comments have been called out for the irresponsible, unhelpful and counter-factual shit that they are. So now, those that may’ve been momentarily curious if your opinions held any merit can safely be assumed to have been more properly informed by the replies of said replies here, thankfully. You, on the other hand, can fuck right off, kiddo. I’ve got better things to do then swat at the flies you attract.
Yes, their intention was to be shitty by asking if you were high because the average person is by no means qualified to self diagnose.
Insisting that it’s a good idea to ignore people who spent their entire higher education and their entire career studying and treating those issues is exactly the same bullshit antivaxers try to pull and it’s dangerously irresponsible.
Mental health is obviously not an exact science; it can’t be. There are far too many variables. But, humans are very good at pattern recognition, and someone who has successfully treated dozens of patients with your exact symptoms is much more likely to get it right than some rando using WebMD.
Getting diagnosed as autistic as an adult was/is a hell of a ride. It explains so much, and it's good to find my people and know I'm not "broken" but yeah, life still seems that much harder, now I just know why.
My wife is going through that journey at the moment. It’s surprisingly hard to find a therapist who doesn’t just whip out the DSM and say she can make eye contact so she’s not autistic.
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was a young child; my parents didn’t like it that ALLEGEDLY to keep the diagnosis on my IEP I had to be kept on ritalin so they raised me to believe it was a misdiagnosis.
So, my entire life I just thought i was a bad person. That i can’t do things like keep my living space clean or take in information accurately and retain it because I’m just a stupid piece of shit. My self esteem was destroyed growing up because my parents didn’t care about working with my ADHD diagnosis because “legal meth”. It makes me feel better that I’m not just an idiot, I’m still kind of steamed that when i told them i wanted to get rediagnosed in high school they just wrote me off and I could’ve gone to college and had a more successful life than I do now but it’s whatever. I know getting diagnosed as an adult is much more difficult than when you’re a kid, but I’m ready to start living my life.
I didn’t get diagnosed ADHD until I was 27. I would have had the chance when I was in kindergarten, but my parents fiercely held onto the negative stigmas associated to mental health care. They regularly screamed at me asking if I wanted to go to the fucking loony bin doctor or will I get my act together and behave. I finished high-school with C’s and B’s on the report card, then I dropped out of college. How would I have done if my parents would have listened to my teacher when she told them she suspected I had ADHD?
I’m in the same boat with ADHD and anxiety. Finally getting myself medicated for anxiety at age 30. Would have been nice if I hadn’t been yelled at about those “black box” pills when I talked to my mom about it when I was younger. But here we are and I’m just grateful I’ve gotten started healing. Best wishes friend.
You mind sharing what you were diagnosed for anxiety and maybe how it has been going? I’ve always been a bit skeptical about what they can do for people with anxiety.
I’m glad you are finally getting the help that you need. I’m diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Luckily my mother has always been in support of medication for mental health. So I was able to get treatment at a decently young age. It was mostly my own stubbornness of not wanting to accept I was “broken” that I didn’t get treatment till I was 19.
Intelligence doesn’t exactly correlate with success either though.
There are plenty of breathtakingly intelligent people who either can’t or refuse to play the social game that is required for success. Many of them are neurodivergent.
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