Is this Medical Malpractice?

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I was initially diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.

I was put on Abilify 20 mgs.

I gave the doctor my symptoms and told him I thought I had ADD.

The problem was that the paranoia was there since eight years earlier. But, these delusions were something the PDoc didn’t know about. I didn’t know they were delusions because they were true to me.

I was diagnosed when I went out for three nights without sleep, and did some stupid things. Thus, I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.

Now almost 10 years since my first diagnosis, it has been realized that the roots of the illness (SZA) are in early childhood.

Now apart from the concentration problems, I had another symptom: A sound filtering problem since childhood.
So, at that time, I was giving him my symptoms, which included the above symptom.

Eventually, he gave me a medication for focus, Ritalin. For years after that, I had esoteric experiences. I was put on Clozapine, and the esoteric experiences continued. When Abilify was mixed with Clozapine, the esoteric experiences abated. This was Eight years after the initial diagnosis.

Once he had switched me to Ritalin, and I had ended up in the hospital, that Pdoc said he doesn’t specialize in this condition and doesn’t want to treat me anymore.

His research work was in Bipolar/Schizophrenia I believe.

Whenever I tell a Psychiatrist that I was given Ritalin for focus, they don’t understand how Ritalin could be given to someone with Psychosis without due diligence. At that time, my family had provided some symptoms, based on which that doctor had concluded that I was in Psychotic Depression. In other words he didn’t think I was in Mania because of Abilify, but because I was Bipolar, it must be Psychotic Depression. Yet, he gave me Ritalin, though I asked for it because I thought I had ADD.

My Columbia University GPA was 3.5 so the doctor just couldn’t understand how this was possible. The symptoms I had, and the fact that they were present since childhood, was what baffled him. He seemed more concerned about that and kept on asking me my GPA.

Is this a criterion to judge whether there is Bipolar or Schizoaffective?

He just had to make sense of the symptoms.

Would this be considered Malpractice?

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Any doc giving clozapine should be sued

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Why is that :thinking::thinking::thinking:

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No it’s not malpractice. Your doctor was attempting to treat your symptoms. These things are very much trial and error.

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Psychiatry is a guessing game. They don’t always get it right.

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Sounds to me like you are fortunate enough to have doctors working hard on treating you. Many are not so lucky to have access to this quality of medical treatment. Count your blessings and happy holidays.

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Definitely not. Malpractice is when the pdoc does you some kind of permanent physical or emotional harm. I’m trained as an RN.

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Sounds like Aspergerz

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By the way it’s easy to misdiagnosed people because a lot of these symptoms sometime overlap

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A lot of people with Aspergers gets misdiagnosed with add bipolar ,borderline ,and schizophrenic all the time

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It is Schizoaffective with a Hundred percent probability.

The sound filtering problem is related to the Schizoaffective. I have asked my doctor several times.

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Sound filtering is indeed a SZ problem, more than an Asperger’s problem.

Asperger’s is more of a social disorder, where the person is deemed as ‘socially awkward’.

What you mentioned is not medical malpractice, as the doctor(s) was simply trying to help based on the problems YOU were telling them.

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I was telling the Doctor the way it was-- it could be a genuine error on his part.

He was thinking through the lens of Bipolar Disorder. But, he was aware I was in Psychotic Depression because he told me that this is what I had.

He was also aware that I had a severe manic episode, which in his view the Abilify was controlling well.

What made me suspicious is that he didn’t do further testing to check whether I was indeed ADD. And, the fact that, once I was hospitalized, he didn’t want to see me after that.

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It might be, but I will honestly say its not worth it for you to fight it. The time an energy invested will at most be paid out by an insurance claim and thats at best. If you do see any money from it, it will be after years and years of effort on behalf of lawyers, who you will have to pay most of the proceeds of the resulting award.

I think the best you can do is inform the medical oversight of the doctor you had about the event and see if they can verify if it was a genuine error that training should’ve prevented, and then have them penalize the doctor.

I don’t think you should try though, because they’re doing their best and we as advocates for ourselves in altered mental states we aren’t at our best to describe in perfect terms our conditions.

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